JOHN  KNOX 

TAYLOR  INNES 


FAMOUS 
•SCOTS' 
•SERIES* 


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JOHN: 
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JOHN! 
KNOX 

BY 
A : TAYLOR 

ir    INNES 

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scots: 

SERIES 


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PUBLISHED    BY    Z 
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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

The  Scholar  and  Priest  :   His  Environment         .  9 


CHAPTER  II 
The  Crisis  :  Single  or  Two-fold  ?     .  .  25 

CHAPTER  III 

=^ 
v- 
-  The  Inner  Life  :  His  Women  Friends         .  .         48 

CHAPTER  IV 
The  Public  Life  :  To  the  Parliament  of  1560     .         65 

CHAPTER  V 

The  Public  Life  :  Legislation  and  Church  Plans         95 

CHAPTER  VI 

The  Public  Life  :  The  Conflict  with  Queen  Mary       117 

CHAPTER  VII 
Closing  Years  and  Death        ....        144 


JOHN     KNOX 

CHAPTER  I 

THE    SCHOLAR    AND    PRIEST  :    HIS    ENVIRONMENT 

The  century  now  closing  has  redeemed  Knox  from 
neglect,  and  has  gathered  around  his  name  a  mass  of 
biographical  material.  That  material,  too,  includes 
much  that  is  of  the  nature  of  self-revelation,  to  be 
gleaned  from  familiar  letters,  as  well  as  from  his  own 
history  of  his  time.  Yet,  after  all  that  has  been  brought 
together,  Knox  remains  to  many  observers  a  mere  hard 
outline,  while  to  others  he  is  almost  an  enigma — a  blur, 
bright  or  black,  upon  the  historic  page. 

There  is  one  real  and  great  difficulty.  For  the  first 
forty  years  of  his  life  we  know  absolutely  nothing  of  the 
inner  man.  Yet  at  forty  most  men  are  already  made. 
And  in  the  case  of  this  man,  from  about  that  date  on- 
wards we  find  the  character  settled  and  fixed.  Hence- 
forward, during  the  whole  later  life  with  its  continually 
changing  drama,  Knox  remains  intensely  and  unchange- 
ably the  same.  It  is  the  contrast,  perhaps  the  crisis, 
which  is  worth  studying.  The  contrast,  indeed,  is  not 
unprecedented.  More  than  one  Knox-like  prophet,  in 
the  solemn  days  of  early  faith,  *  was  in  the  desert  until 
the  time  of  his  shewing  unto  Israel ' ;  and  not  the 
polished  shaft  only,  but  the  rough  spear-head  too,  has 
remained  hid  in  the  shadow  of  a  mighty  hand  until  the 
very  day  when  it  was  launched.     But  each  such  case  im- 


lo  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

pels  us  the  more  to  inquire,  What  was  it  after  all  which 
really  made  the  man  who  in  his  turn  made  the  age  ? 

Knox  was  born  in  or  near  Haddington  in  1505.     Of 
his  father,  William  Knox,  and  his  mother,  whose  maiden 
name  was  Sinclair,  nothing  is  known,  except  that  the 
parents  of  both  belonged  to  that  district  of  country,  and 
had  fought  under  the  standard  of  the  House  of  Bothwell. 
We  shall  never  know  which  of  the  two  contributed  the 
insight  or  the  audacity,  the  tenacity  or  the  tenderness, 
the  common-sense  or  the  humour,  which  must  all  have 
been    part  of  Knox's  natural  character  before  it  was 
moulded  from  without.    His  father  was  of  the  *  simple,' 
not  of  the  gentle,  sort;  possibly  a  peasant,   or  frugal 
cultivator  of  the  soil.    But  he  saved  enough  to  send  one 
of  his  two  sons,  John,  now  in  the  eighteenth  year  of  his 
age,  and  having,  no  doubt,  received  his  earlier  education 
in  the  excellent  grammar  school  of  Haddington,  to  the 
University  of  Glasgow.     Haddington  was  in  the  diocese 
of  St  Andrews,  but  a  native  of  Haddington,  John  Major, 
was  at  this  time  Regent  in  Glasgow.     He  had  brought 
from  Paris,  four  years  before,  a  vast  academical  reputa- 
tion, and  Knox  now  '  sat  as  at  his  feet '  during  his  last 
year  of  teaching  in  Glasgow.     In  1523,  however,  Major 
was  transferred  to  St  Andrews,   and  there  he  taught 
theology  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century,   during 
the  latter  half  of  which  time  he  was  Provost  or  Head  of 
St  Salvator's  College.      Whether  Knox  at  any  time  fol- 
lowed him  there  does  not  appear.    Beza,  Knox's  earliest 
biographer,   thought  he  did.      But   Beza's  information 
as  to  this  portion  of  the  life,  though  apparently  derived 
from  Knox's  colleague  and  successor,  *  is  so  extremely 

*  Knox's  later  biographer,  Dr  Hume  Brown,  has  given  to  the 
world  a  letter  from  Sir  Peter  Young  to  Beza,  transmitting  a 
posthumous  portrait  of  Knox,  which  is  thus  no  doubt  the  original 
of  the  likeness  in  Beza's  Icones,  and  makes  the  latter  our  only  trust- 


JOHN  KNOX  II 

confused  as  to  suggest  that  the  Reformer  was  equally 
reticent  about  it  to  those  nearest  him  as  he  has  chosen 
to  be  to  posterity.  For  nearly  twenty  years  of  manhood, 
indeed,  Knox  disappears  from  our  view.  And  when, 
in  1540,  he  emerges  again  in  his  native  district,  it  is  as 
a  notary  and  a  priest.  '  Sir  John  Knox '  he  was  called 
by  others,  that  being  the  style  by  which  secular  priests 
were  known,  unless  they  had  taken  not  only  the  bachelor's 
but  also  the  master's  degree  at  the  University.*  Knox 
in  after  years  never  alluded  to  his  priesthood,  though  his 
adversaries  did;  but  so  late  as  27th  March  1543  he 
describes  himself  in  a  notarial  deed  in  his  own  hand- 
writing as  '  John  Knox,  minister  of  the  sacred  altar,  of 
the  Diocese  of  St  Andrews,  notary  by  Apostolical  author- 
ity.' Apostolical  means  Papal,  the  notarial  authority 
being  transmitted  through  the  St  Andrews  Archbishop  ; 
and  Knox  at  this  time  does  not  shrink  from  dating  his 
notarial  act  as  in  such  a  year  *  of  the  pontificate  of  our 
most  holy  Father  and  Lord  in  Christ,  the  Lord  Paul, 
Pope  by  the  Providence  of  God.'  Only  three  years 
later,  in  1546,  he  was  carrying  a  two-handed  sword 
before  Wishart,  then  in  danger  of  arrest  and  condem- 
nation to  the  stake  at  the  hands  of  the  same  Archbishop 

worthy  representation  of  him.  The  letter  adds,  *  You  may  look  for 
(expectabis)  his  full  history  from  Master  Lawson ' ;  and  this  raises 
the  hope  that  Beza's  biography,  founded  upon  the  memoir  of  Knox's 
colleague,  James  Lawson,  as  the  icon  probably  was  upon  the  Edin- 
burgh portrait,  would  be  of  great  value.  In  point  of  fact  Beza's 
biography  does  give  great  prominence  to  Knox's  closing  pastorate 
and  last  days,  as  his  newly-appointed  colleague  might  be  expected 
to  do.  But  about  his  early  years  it  is  hopelessly  inaccurate,  to  say 
the  least. 

*  So,  in  Shakespeare,  Sir  Hugh,  who  is  *  of  the  Church ' ;  Sir 
Topas  the  curate,  whose  beard  and  gown  the  clown  borrows ;  Sir 
Oliver  Martext,  who  will  not  be  *  flouted  out  of  his  calUng ; '  and  Sir 
Nathaniel,  who  claims  to  have  *  taste  and  feeling,'  and  whose  female 
parishioners  call  him  indifferently  the  *  Person '  or  the  *  Parson.' 


12  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Beaton  under  whom  Knox  held  his  orders.  And  in  the 
following  year,  1547,  Knox  is  standing  in  the  Church  of 
St  Andrews,  and  denouncing  the  Pope  (not  as  an  indi- 
vidual, though  the  Pope  of  that  day  was  a  Borgia,  but) 
as  the  official  head  of  an  Anti-Christian  system. 

This  early  blank  in  the  biography  raises  questions, 
some  of  which  will  never  be  answered.  We  do  not 
know  at  all  when  Knox  took  priest's  orders.  It  was 
almost  certainly  not  before  1530,  for  it  was  only  in 
that  year  that  he  became  eligible  as  being  twenty-five 
years  old.  It  may  possibly  have  been  as  late  as  1540, 
when  his  name  is  first  found  in  a  deed.  In  that  and 
the  two  following  years  he  seems  to  have  resided  at 
Samuelston  near  Haddington,  and  may  have  officiated 
in  the  little  chapel  there.  But  he  was  also  at  this  time 
acting  as  *Maister'  or  tutor  to  the  sons  of  several 
gentlemen  of  East  Lothian,  and  he  continued  this  down 
to  1547,  the  time  of  his  own  'call'  to  preach  the 
Evangel.  Nor  do  we  know  whether  the  change  in  his 
views,  which  in  1547  was  so  complete,  had  been  sudden 
on  the  one  hand  or  gradual  and  long  prepared  on  the 
other.  Knox's  own  silence  on  this  is  very  remarkable. 
A  man  of  his  fearless  egoism  and  honesty  might  have 
been  expected  to  leave,  if  not  an  autobiography  like 
those  of  Augustine  and  Bunyan,  at  least  a  narrative  of 
change  like  the  Force  of  Truth  of  Thomas  Scott,  or  the 
Apologia  of  John  Henry  Newman.  He  has  not  done 
so ;  indeed,  the  author  who  preserved  for  us  so  much 
of  that  age,  and  of  his  own  later  history  in  it,  seems  for 
some  reason  to  have  judged  his  whole  earlier  period 
unworthy  of  record — or  even  of  recal.  For  we  find  no 
evidence  of  his  having  been  more  confidential  on  this 
subject  with  any  of  his  contemporaries  than  he  has 
been  with  us.  This  certainly  suggests  that  the  change 
may  have  been  very  recent  —  determined,  perhaps, 
wholly  through  the  personal  influence  of  Wishart,  whom 


JOHN  KNOX  13 

Knox  so  affectionately  commemorates.  Or,  if  it  was 
not  recent,  it  is  extremely  unlikely  that  it  can  have  been 
detailed,  vivid,  and  striking,  as  well  as  prolonged.  Knox 
was  not  the  man  to  suppress  a  narrative,  however 
painful  to  himself,  which  he  could  have  held  to  be  in  a 
marked  degree  to  the  glory  of  God  or  for  the  good 
of  men.  But  whatever  the  reason  was,  the  time  past  of 
his  life  sufficed  this  man  for  silence  and  self-accusation. 
We  may  be  sure  that  it  would  have  done  so  (and  perhaps 
done  so  equally),  no  matter  whether  those  twenty  years 
had  been  spent  in  the  complacent  routine  of  a  rustic  in 
holy  orders ;  in  the  dogmatism,  defensive  or  aggressive, 
of  scholastic  youth ;  in  fruitless  efforts  to  understand  the 
new  views  of  which  he  was  one  day  to  be  the  chief 
representative ;  or  in  half-hearted  hesitation  whether, 
after  having  so  far  understood  them,  he  could  part 
with  all  things  for  their  sake.  Which  of  these  positions 
he  held,  or  how  far  he  may  have  passed  from  one  to 
another,  we  may  never  be  able  to  ascertain.  But  there 
is  one  too  clear  indication  that  Knox  disliked,  not  only 
to  record,  but  even  to  recal,  his  life  in  the  Catholic 
communion.  His  greatest  defect  in  after  years,  as  a 
man  and  a  writer,  is  his  inability  to  sympathise  with 
those  still  found  entangled  in  that  old  life.  He 
absolutely  refuses  to  put  himself  in  their  place,  or  to 
imagine  how  a  position  which  was  for  so  many  years 
his  own  could  be  honestly  chosen,  or  even  honestly 
retained  for  a  day,  by  another.  This  would  have  been 
a  misfortune,  and  a  moral  defect,  even  in  a  man  not 
naturally  of  a  sympathetic  temper.  But  Knox,  as  we 
shall  see,  was  a  man  of  quick  and  tender  nature,  and 
had  rather  a  passion  for  sympathising  with  those  who 
were  not  on  the  other  side  of  the  gulf  he  thus  fixed. 
And  this  one-sided  incapacity  for  sympathy  must  cer- 
tainly be  connected  with  his  one-sided  reticence  as  to  the 
earlier  half  of  his  own  autobiography. 


14  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Incapacity  to  sympathise  with  persons  entangled  in  a 
system  is  one  thing,  and  disapproval  of  that  system, 
or  even  violent  rejection  of  it,  is  another.  Knox,  as 
is  well  known,  broke  absolutely  with  the  church  system 
in  which  he  was  brought  up.  What  was  that  system, 
and  what  was  Knox's  individual  outlook  upon  the 
Church — first,  of  Western  Europe,  and  secondly  of 
Scotland  ? 

We  know  at  least  that  Knox,  before  breaking  with  the 
church  system  of  mediaeval  Europe,  was  for  twenty  years 
in  close  contact  with  it.  And  his  was  no  mere  external 
contact  such  as  Haddington,  with  its  magnificent  churches 
and  monasteries,  supplied.  It  commenced  with  study, 
and  with  study  under  the  chief  theological  teacher  of  the 
land  and  the  time.  Major  was  the  last  of  the  scholastics 
in  our  country.  But  the  energy  of  thought  of  scholasti- 
cism, marvellous  as  it  often  was,  was  built  upon  the  lines 
and  contained  within  the  limits  of  an  already  existing 
church  system.  And  that  system  was  an  authoritative 
one  in  every  sense.  The  hierarchy  which  governed  the 
Church,  and  all  but  constituted  it,  was  sacerdotal ;  that 
is,  it  interposed  its  own  mediation  at  the  point  where  the 
individual  meets  and  deals  with  God.  But  it  interposed 
correspondingly  at  every  other  point  of  the  belief  and 
practice  of  the  private  man,  enforcing  its  doctrine  upon 
the  conscience,  and  its  direction  upon  the  will,  of  every 
member  of  the  church.  Nor  was  the  system  authoritative 
only  over  those  who  received  or  accepted  it.  Originally, 
indeed,  and  even  in  the  age  when  the  faith  was  digested 
into  a  creed  by  the  first  Council,  the  emperor,  himself 
an  ardent  member  of  the  Church,  left  it  free  to  all  his 
subjects  throughout  the  world  to  be  its  members  or  not 
as  they  chose.  But  that  great  experiment  of  toleration 
lasted  less  than  a  century.  For  much  more  than  a 
thousand  years  the  same  faith,  slowly  transformed  into 
a  church  system  under  the  central  administration  of  the 


JOHN  KNOX  15 

Popes,  had  been  made  binding  by  imperial  and  municipal 
law  upon  every  human  being  in  Europe. 

Major,  not  only  by  his  own  earlier  writings,  but  as  the 
representative  in  Scotland  of  the  University  of  Paris, 
recalled  to  his  countrymen  the  great  struggle  of  the 
Middle  Age  in  favour  of  freedom — and  especially  of 
church  freedom  against  the  Popes.  That  struggle 
indeed  had  Germany  rather  than  France  for  its  original 
centre,  and  it  was  under  the  flag  of  the  Empire  that 
the  progressive  despotism  of  Hildebrand  and  his  suc- 
cessors over  the  feudal  world  was  chiefly  resisted.  The 
Empire,  however,  was  now  a  decaying  force.  Europe 
was  being  split  into  nationahties  ;  and  national  churches 
— a  novelty  in  Christendom — were,  under  various  pre- 
texts, coming  into  existence.  For  the  last  two  centuries 
France  had  thus  been  the  chief  national  opponent  of  the 
centralising  influence  of  Rome,  and  the  University  of 
Paris  was,  during  that  time,  the  greatest  theological 
school  in  the  world.  As  such  it  had  maintained  the 
doctrine  that  the  church  universal  could  have  no 
absolute  monarch,  but  was  bound  to  maintain  its 
own  self-government,  and  that  its  proper  organ  for  this 
was  a  general  council.  And  in  the  early  part  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  when  the  schism  caused  by  rival  Popes 
had  thrown  back  the  Church  upon  its  native  powers,  the 
University  of  Paris  was  the  great  influence  which  led  the 
Councils  of  Constance  and  of  Basle,  not  only  to  assert 
this  doctrine,  but  to  carry  it  into  effect. 

But  Major,  when  Knox  met  him,  represented  in  this 
matter  a  cause  already  lost.  Even  in  the  previous 
century  the  decrees  of  the  reforming  Councils  were 
at  once  frustrated  by  the  successors  of  the  Popes 
whom  they  deposed,  and  in  this  sixteenth  century  a 
Lateran  Council  had  already  anticipated  the  Vatican 
of  the  nineteenth  by  declaring  the  Pope  to  be  supreme 
over  Council  and  Church  alike.     Even  the  anti-Papal 


1 6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Councils  themselves,  too,  were  exclusively  hierarchical, 
and  accordingly  they  opposed  any  independent  right  on 
the  part  of  the  laity,  as  well  as  all  serious  enquiries  into 
the  earlier  practice  and  faith  of  the  Church.  So  at 
Constance  the  Chancellor  of  Paris,  Doctor  Christian- 
issimus  as  well  as  statesman  and  mystic,  compensated 
for  his  successful  pressure  upon  Rome  by  helping  to 
send  to  the  stake,  notwithstanding  the  Emperor's  safe- 
conduct,  the  pure-hearted  Huss.  The  result  was  that, 
even  before  the  time  of  Major,  the  expectation,  so  long 
cherished  by  Europe,  of  a  great  reform  through  a  great 
Council  had  died  out.  And  the  University  of  Paris, 
instead  of  continuing  to  act  in  place  of  that  coming 
Council  as  '  a  sort  of  standing  committee  of  the 
French,  or  even  of  the  universal.  Church,'  *  had  be- 
come a  reactionary  and  retarding  power.  It  opposed 
Humanism,  and  was  the  stronghold  of  the  method  of 
teaching  which  the  new  generation  knew  as  *  So- 
phistry.' It  opposed  Reuchlin,  and  was  preparing  to 
oppose  Luther,  and  to  urge  against  its  own  most 
distinguished  pupils  the  law  of  penal  fire.  It  con- 
tinued to  oppose  the  despotism  of  the  Pope,  but  it 
did  so  rather  from  the  standpoint  of  a  narrow  and 
nationalist  Gallicanism,  based  largely  upon  the  counter- 
despotism  of  the  King.  This  selfish  policy  attained  in 
Major's  own  time  its  fitting  result  and  reward.  The 
despotic  King  and  despotic  Pope  found  it  convenient 
for  their  interests  to  partition  between  them  the 
'  liberties '  of  the  Galilean  Church ;  and  by  the  Con- 
cordat of  Bologna  in  1 5 1 6,  Leo  gained  a  huge  revenue 
from  the  ecclesiastical  endowments  of  France,  while 
Francis  usurped  the  right  of  nominating  all  its  bishops. 
The  University,  as  well  as  the  Parliaments,  resisted,  and 
Major,  who  now  lectured  in  the  Sorbonne  as  Doctor  in 
Theology,  and  had  become  famous  as  a  representative 

*  Rashdall's  '  Universities  of  Europe,'  i.  52^. 


JOHN  KNOX  t7 

of  the  anti-Papal  school  of  Occam,  took  his  share  in 
the  work.  He  was  preparing  for  publication  a  Com- 
mentary on  the  Gospel  of  Matthew,  and  he  now  added 
to  it  four  Disputations  against  the  arbitrary  powers  of 
Popes  and  Bishops,  and  especially  against  the  authority 
of  Popes  in  temporal  matters  over  Kings,  and  in 
spiritual  matters  over  Councils.  It  was  all  in  vain. 
In  15 1 7  the  University  was  forced  by  the  Crown  to 
submit,  after  a  protest  of  the  broadest  kind ;  *  and  in 
15 18  Major  returned  to  his  native  country  a  famous 
teacher,  but  a  defeated  churchman.  Yet  the  grave  fact 
for  Scotland  was  that  Major  and  his  old  University,  and 
the  Western  hierarchy  everywhere,  henceforward  practic- 
ally acquiesced  in  their  own  defeat.  A  greater  question 
had  arisen,  and  one  which  they  were  unwilling  to  face. 
On  the  other  side  of  the  Rhine,  Luther  and  his  friends 
now  claimed  for  the  individual  Christian  the  same  kind 
of  freedom  against  Councils  and  Bishops  which  the 
previous  century  had  claimed  for  Councils  and  Bishops 
against  Popes.  Paris  took  the  lead  in  opposition  to  the 
new  Evangel  by  its  Academic  decrees  of  1521.  And 
when  Major,  in  1530,  republished  his  Commentary,  he 
not  only  omitted  from  it  his  Disputations  against  Papal 
absolutism,  but  dedicated  it  to  Archbishop  James  Beaton 

*  The  Act  of  Appeal  of  the  University  lays  down  principles  which 
apply  far  beyond  the  bounds  of  Gallicanism ;  that  *  the  Pope, 
although  he  holds  his  power  immediately  from  God,  is  not  pre- 
vented, by  his  possession  of  this  power,  from  going  wrong ' ;  that 
'  if  he  commands  that  which  is  unjust,  he  may  righteously  be  re- 
sisted ' ;  and  *  if,  by  the  action  of  the  powers  that  be,  we  are 
deprived  of  the  means  of  resisting  the  Pope,  there  remains  one 
remedy,  founded  on  natural  law,  which  no  Prince  can  take  away 
— the  remedy  of  appeal,  which  is  competent  to  every  individual,  by 
divine  right,  and  natural  right,  and  human  right.'  And,  accord- 
ingly, the  University,  protesting  that  the  Basle  Council's  decrees  of 
the  past  have  been  set  aside,  Appeals  to  a  Council  in  the  future. — 
Bulaeus'  *  Hist,  of  the  University  of  Paris,'  vol.  viii.  p.  92. 
4  B 


1 8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

as  the  '  supplanter  '  and  '  exterminator  '  of  Lutheranism, 
and,  above  all,  as  the  judge  who,  amid  the  murmurings 
of  many,  had  recently  *  and  righteously  condemned  the 
nobly-born  Patrick  Hamilton. 

It  may  be  well  thus  to  represent  to  ourselves  what 
must  have  been  the  outlook  into  the  Western  Church  of 
Major,  or  of  any  one  who  looked  through  Major's  eyes,  in 
that  year  1523.  But  I  think  it  very  unlikely  that  Knox 
could  have  derived  from  such  an  outlook,  or  from  Major 
in  any  aspect,  a  serious  impulse  to  his  career  as  Reformer. 
Knox  no  doubt  learned  from  him  scholastic  logic,  and 
turned  it  in  later  days  with  much  vigour  to  his  own 
purposes.  Major,  too,  may  have  unconsciously  revealed 
to  his  pupils  with  how  much  hope  the  former  generation 
had  looked  forward  to  a  council.  We  find  afterwards 
that  Knox  and  his  friends,  like  Luther  in  his  earlier 
stages,  when  appealing  against  the  hierarchy,  sometimes 
appealed  to  a  General  Council.  But  neither  side  re- 
garded this  as  serious.  It  would  have  been  more  im- 
portant if  we  could  have  shown  that  Major  transmitted  to 
his  pupil  the  opposition  maintained  for  centuries  by  his 
university  to  an  ultramontane  Pontiff  as  the  hereditary 
opponent  of  all  Church  freedom  and  all  Church  reform. 
But  Luther  and  the  German  Reformers  had  already 
exaggerated  this  view,  so  far  as  to  suggest  that  the 
usurping  chief  of  the  Church  must  be  the  scriptural 
Antichrist.  And  their  views,  brought  direct  to  Scot- 
land by  men  like  Hamilton,  had,  as  we  have  seen, 
immensely  increased  the  reaction  in  the  mind  of  Major, 
which  was  begun  abroad  before   15 18.     It  is,  indeed, 

*  This  uncompromising  preface  took  the  place  of  one  in  which 
Major,  on  his  arrival  in  Scotland  in  1518,  praised  the  same  Arch- 
bishop, then  in  Glasgow,  for  his  many-sided  and  *  chamaelon-like 
mildness.'  It  is  generally  recognised  that  the  stern  policy  latterly 
carried  on  under  the  nominal  authority  of  James  Beaton  was  really  in- 
spired by  his  nephew  and  coadjutor,  David  Beaton,  the  future  cardinal. 


JOHN  KNOX  19 

curious  to  notice  how  in  his  later  writings  the  old 
university  feeling  against  tyranny  in  the  Church  almost 
disappears,  while  the  equally  old  and  honourable  feeling 
of  the  learned  Middle  Age,  and  especially  of  its  uni- 
versities, against  the  tyranny  of  kings  and  nobles,  finds 
expression  alike  in  his  history  and  his  commentaries. 
Buchanan,  who  proclaimed  to  all  Europe  the  consti- 
tutional rights,  even  against  their  sovereign,  of  the 
people  of  Scotland,  and  Knox,  the  *  subject  born  within 
the  same,'  who  was  destined  to  translate  that  Radical 
theory  so  largely  into  fact,  were  both  taught  by  Major. 
And  they  may  well  have  been  much  influenced  on  this 
side  by  a  man  who  had  long  before  written  that  *  the 
original  and  supreme  power  resides  in  the  whole  of  a 
free  people,  and  is  incapable  of  being  surrendered,'  in- 
somuch that  an  incorrigible  tyrant  may  always  be  *  de- 
posed by  that  people  as  by  a  superior  authority.'  *  For 
even  Fergus  the  First,  he  narrates,  *  had  no  right '  other 
than  the  nation's  choice,  and  when  Sir  William  Wallace  was 
yet  a  boy,  he  was  taught  by  his  Scottish  tutor  to  repeat 
continually  the  rude  inspiring  rhyme,  *  Dico  tibi  verum 
Libertas  optima  rerum.'  f  These  views  as  to  the  rights 
of  man,  and  of  Scottish  men,  may  well  have  fanned,  or 
even  kindled,  the  strong  feeling  of  independence  in 
secular  matters  and  as  a  citizen,  which  burned  in  the 
breast  of  Knox.  But  as  to  spiritual  matters  and 
the  Church  universal,  the  only  feelings  which  we  can 
imagine  Major,  on  his  return  from  abroad,  to  have 
impressed  upon  the  younger  man  from  Haddington 
are  a  despair  of  reform,  and  a  disbelief  in  revolution. 

Let  us  turn,  therefore,  from  abroad  to  the  Church  at 
home.  It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  the  clergy  of 
this  age  in  Scotland  were  extraordinarily  corrupt  in  life, 

*  *  Expositio  Matt.'  fol.  71.     (Paris.) 

t  *  I  tell  the  truth  to  thee,  there's  nought  like  Liberty  ! ' — 
Major's  '  History  of  Greater  Britain.' 


20  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

a  reproach  which  applied  eminently  to  the  higher  ranks 
and  the  representative  men.  But  corruption  of  church- 
men is  always  a  symptom  of  deeper  things.  It  does  not 
appear  that  Scotland  was  much  influenced  by  the  spirit 
of  the  Renaissance,  whether  you  apply  that  term  to  the 
intellectual  passion  for  both  knowledge  and  beauty  which 
spread  over  most  parts  of  Europe  during  the  three  previous 
centuries,  or  to  the  more  specific  and  half-Pagan  culture 
which  in  some  parts  of  Europe  was  the  result.  It  may 
be  more  important  to  observe  that  the  Church  in  Scot- 
land had  not  enjoyed  any  period  of  inward  religious 
revival — any  which  could  be  described  as  native  to  it 
or  original.  On  the  contrary  its  great  epoch  had  been 
its  transformation,  through  royal  and  foreign  influence, 
into  the  likeness  of  English  and  continental  civilisation, 
as  civilisation  was  understood  in  the  Middle  Age.  And 
that  transformation  in  the  days  of  Queen  Margaret  and 
her  sons  was  accompanied,  and  to  a  large  extent  com- 
pensated, by  a  less  desirable  incorporation  into  the 
western  ecclesiastical  system.  The  later  *  coming  of 
the  Friars'  had  not  the  same  powerful  effect  in  the 
remote  north  which  it  had  in  some  other  realms.  And 
in  any  case  that  impulse  too  had  long  since  yielded  to  a 
strong  reaction,  and  the  preachers  were  now  regarded 
with  the  disgust  with  which  mankind  usually  resent  the 
attempt  to  manipulate  them  by  external  means  without 
a  real  message.  But  there  were  two  great  sources  of 
ruin  to  the  Scottish  church,  both  connected  with  its 
relation  to  a  powerful  aristocracy.  One  was  the  extra- 
ordinary extent  to  which  its  high  offices  were  used  as 
sinecures  for  the  favourites,  and  the  sons  of  favourites, 
of  nobles  and  of  kings.  This  did  not  tend  to  impoverish 
the  church ;  on  the  contrary,  it  made  it  an  object  to  all 
the  great  families  to  keep  up  the  wealth  on  which  they 
proposed  that  their  unworthy  scions  should  feed.  *  In 
proportion  to  the  resources  of  the  country  the  Scottish 


JOHN  KNOX  21 

clergy  were  probably  the  richest  in  Europe.'*  But  the 
wealth,  accumulated  in  idle  and  unworthy  hands,  was 
now  a  scandal  to  religion,  and  a  constant  fountain  of 
immorality.  Still  worse  was  the  extent  to  which  that 
wealth  was  in  Scotland  diverted  from  its  best  uses  to  the 
less  desirable  side — the  monastic  side — of  the  mediaeval 
church.  In  the  revival  which  came  from  England  before 
the  twelfth  century,  a  great  impulse  had  been  given  to 
the  parochialising  of  the  country,  and  to  keeping  up 
religious  life  in  every  district  and  estate.  But  a  prejudice 
running  back  to  very  early  centuries  branded  the  parish 
priests  as  seculars,  and  gradually  drew  away  again  the 
devotion  and  the  means  of  the  faithful  from  the  parishes 
where  they  were  needed,  and  to  which  they  properly 
belonged.  It  drew  them  away,  in  Scotland,  not  only  to 
rich  centres  like  cathedrals,  with  their  too  wasteful  retinue, 
but  far  more  to  the  great  monasteries  scattered  over  the 
land.  Kings  and  barons,  who  proposed  to  spend  life  so  as 
to  need  after  its  close  a  good  deal  of  intercession,  naturally 
turned  their  eyes,  even  before  deathbed,  to  these  wealthy 
strongholds  of  poverty  and  prayer;  and  of  a  hundred 
other  places  besides  Melrose,  we  know  *  That  lands  and 
livings,  many  a  rood,  had  gifted  the  shrine  for  their 
soul's  repose.'  But  the  transfer,  to  such  centres,  of 
lands  (which  were  supposed,  by  the  feudal  law,  to 
belong  to  chiefs  rather  than  to  the  community),  was  not 
so  direct  an  injury  to  the  people  of  Scotland,  as  the 
alienation  to  the  same  institutions  of  parochial  tithes — 
sometimes  under  the  form  of  alienating  the  churches  to 
which  the  tithes  were  paid.  These  parochial  tithes  all 
possessors  of  land  in  the  parish  were  bound  by  law  to 
pay,  whether  they  desired  it  or  not.  And,  strictly,  they 
should  have  been  paid  to  the  pastor  of  the  parish  and 
for  its  benefit.  But  by  a  scandalous  corruption,  often 
protested  against  by  both  Parliament  and  the  Church,  the 
*  Hume  Brown's  'Knox,'  i.  44. 


22  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Lords  of  lands  were  allowed  to  divert  the  tithes,  which 
they  were  already  bound  to  pay,  to  congested  ecclesias- 
tical centres,  sometimes  to  cathedrals,  more  often  to 
religious  houses  of  *  regulars.'  After  this  was  done  the 
monastery  or  religious  House  enjoyed  the  whole  sheaves 
or  tithes  of  the  land  in  question ;  the  local  vicar,  if  the 
House  appointed  one,  being  entitled  only  to  the  *  lesser 
tithes'  of  domestic  animals,  eggs,  grass,  etc.  This 
robbery  of  the  parishes  of  Scotland — parishes  which 
were  already  far  too  large  and  too  scattered,  as  John 
Major  points  out — was  carried  on  to  an  extraordinary 
extent.  Each  of  the  religious  houses  of  Holyrood  and 
Kelso  had  the  tithes  of  twenty-seven  parishes  diverted 
or  *  appropriated '  to  it.  In  some  districts  two-thirds  of 
the  whole  parish  churches  were  in  the  hands  of  the 
monks,  and  no  fewer  than  thirty-four  were  bestowed  on 
Arbroath  Abbey  in  the  course  of  a  single  reign.  When 
we  remember  that  the  Lords  of  these  great  houses 
were  generally  members — often  unworthy  members — 
of  the  families  which  were  thus  enriching  them  to  the 
detriment  of  the  country,  we  can  imagine  the  com- 
plicated corruption  which  went  on  from  reign  to  reign. 
Unfortunately  the  nepotism  and  simony  which  resulted 
had  direct  example  and  sanction  in  the  relation  to 
Scotland  of  the  Head  of  the  Church  at  Rome.*  The 
most  ardent  Catholics  admit  this  as  true  in  relation  to 
Europe  generally  in  the  time  with  which  we  deal ;  f  and 
the  Holy  See  had  been  allowed  some  centuries  before 
to  claim  Scotland  as  a  country  which  belonged  to  it  in 
a  peculiar  sense,  and  the  Church  of  Scotland  as  subject 
to  it  specially  and  immediately.  The  jealousy  of  an 
Italian  potentate  which  was  always  powerful  in  England, 
and  which  had  now,  under  Henry  the  Eighth,  made  it 

*  See  Scots  Acts,  a.d.  147 i,  c.  43. 
t  An  Petrus  Romae  fuerit,  sub  judice  lis  est  : 
Simonem  Romae  nemo  fuisse  negat. 


JOHN  KNOX  23 

possible  to  reject  the  Romish  supremacy  while  retaining 
the  whole  of  Roman  Catholic  doctrine,  had  little  influ- 
ence farther  north.  Scotland  followed  the  Pope,  even 
when  he  went  to  Avignon,  and  when  England  had 
accepted  his  rival  or  Anti-Pope.  And  while  in  this 
it  sympathised  with  France,  it  had  little  of  that 
traditional  dislike  to  high  Ultramontane  claims  which 
we  saw  to  have  been  so  strong  in  Paris.  The  Pope 
remained  the  centre  of  our  church  system,  and  there 
were  in  Scotland  no  projects  of  serious  reform  except 
those  which  went  so  deep  as  (in  the  case  of  the  Lollards 
and  other  precursors  of  the  Reformation)  to  break  with 
the  existing  ecclesiastical  machine  as  a  whole,  and  so  to 
challenge  the  deadliest  penalties  of  the  law. 

For  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  heresy,  in  the 
modern  misuse  of  the  word  (as  equivalent  to  false 
doctrine),  was  greatly  dreaded  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  or  savagely  punished  by  our  ancient  code.  In 
Scotland,  as  elsewhere,  the  fundamental  law  was  that  of 
Theodosius  and  the  empire,  that  every  man  must  be  a 
member  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  submit  to  it.  That 
law  was  indeed  the  original  establishment  of  the  Church, 
and  for  many  centuries  there  had  been  in  Scotland  no 
penalty  for  breaking  it  except  death.  But  the  Church,  when 
its  authority  was  thus  once  for  all  sufficiently  secured, 
was,  in  the  early  Middle  Age,  rather  tolerant  of  theological 
opinion.  And  not  until  error  had  been  published  and 
persisted  in,  in  face  of  the  injunctions  of  authority — not 
until  the  heresy  thus  threatened  to  be  internal  schism, 
or  repudiation  of  that  authority — was  the  secular  power 
usually  invoked.  Unfortunately  Western  Europe  as  a 
whole,  ever  since  its  intellectual  awakening  three  or 
more  centuries  ago,  was  moving  on  to  precisely  this 
crisis  ;  and  the  very  existence  of  the  Church,  in  the 
sense  of  a  body  of  which  all  citizens  were  compulsorily 
members,  was  now  felt  to  be  at  stake.     The  Scottish 


24  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

sovereign  had  long  since  been  taken  bound,  by  his 
coronation  oath,  to  interpose  his  authority;  and  the 
present  King,  delivered  in  1528  from  the  tutory  of  the 
Douglases  by  the  Beatons,  had  thrown  himself  into  the 
side  of  those  powerful  ecclesiastics.  A  statute,  the  first 
against  heresy  for  nearly  a  century,  was  passed  two  years 
after  Knox  went  to  college.  When  he  was  twenty-three 
years  old,  England  was  preparing  to  reject  the  Pope's 
supremacy ;  but  Scotland  was  so  far  from  it  that  this  year 
Patrick  Hamilton  was  burned  at  St  Andrews.  When  he 
was  thirty-four  years  old,  the  English  revolution  had 
been  accomplished  by  the  despotic  Henry;  but  his 
Scottish  nephew  had  refused  to  follow  the  lead,  and  in 
that  year  five  other  heretics  were  burned  on  the  Castle- 
hill  of  Edinburgh,  the  popular  *  Commons  King '  looking 
on.  On  James  V.'s  death  there  was  a  slight  reaction 
under  the  Regent,  and  Parliament  even  sanctioned  the 
publication  of  the  Scriptures.  But  Arran  made  his 
peace  with  the  Church  in  1543,  and  Beaton,  the  able 
but  worldly  Archbishop  of  St  Andrews,  and  as  such 
Knox's  diocesan,  became  once  more  the  leader  of  Scot- 
land. He  had  already  instituted  the  Inquisition  through- 
out his  see ;  he  was  now  advanced  to  be  Papal  Legate ; 
and  he  was  fully  prepared  to  press  into  execution  the 
Acts  which  a  few  years  before  he  and  the  King  had  per- 
suaded the  Parliament  to  pass.  Not  to  be  a  member  of 
the  Church  had  always  meant  death.  But  now  it  was 
death  by  statute  to  argue  against  the  Pope's  authority ; 
it  was  made  unlawful  even  to  enter  into  discussion  on 
matters  of  religion ;  and  those  in  Scotland  who  were 
merely  suspected  of  heresy  were  pronounced  incapable  of 
any  office  there.  And,  lastly,  those  who  left  the  country 
to  avoid  the  fatal  censure  of  its  Church  on  such  crimes 
as  these,  were  held  by  law  to  be  already  condemned. 
The  illustrious  Buchanan  was  one  of  those  who  thus 
fled.     Knox  remained,  and  suddenly  becomes  visible. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   CRISIS  ;    SINGLE    OR    TWO-FOLD  ? 

On  this  dark  background  Knox  for  the  first  time 
appears  in  history.  But  we  catch  sight  of  him  merely 
as  an  attendant  on  the  attractive  figure  of  George 
Wishart.  At  Cambridge  Wishart  had  been  '  courteous, 
lowly,  lovely,  glad  to  teach,  and  desirous  to  learn ' ; 
when  he  returned  to  Scotland,  Knox  and  others  found 
him  *  a  man  of  such  graces  as  before  him  were  never 
heard  within  this  realm.'  He  had  preached  in  several 
parts  of  Scotland,  and  was  brought  ere  the  spring  of 
1546  by  certain  gentlemen  of  East  Lothian,  'who  then 
were  earnest  professors  of  Christ  Jesus,'  to  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Haddington.  On  the  morning  of  his  last 
sermon  in  that  town  he  had  received  (in  the  mansion- 
house  of  Lethington,  '  the  laird  whereof,'  father  of  the 
famous  William  Maitland,  '  was  ever  civil,  albeit  not 
persuaded  in  religion  ')  a  letter,  '  which  received  and 
read,  he  called  for  John  Knox,  who  had  waited  upon 
him  carefully  from  the  time  he  came  to  Lothian.' 
And  the  same  evening,  with  a  presentiment  of  his 
coming  arrest,  he  'took  his  good-night,  as  it  were  for 
ever,'  of  all  his  acquaintance,  and 

'John  Knox  pressing  to  have  gone  with  the  said  Master 
George,  he  said,  "Nay,  return  to  your  bairns,  and  God  bless 
you  !  One  is  sufficient  for  one  sacrifice."  And  so  he  caused  a 
two-handed  sword  (which  commonly  was  carried  with  the  said 
Master    George)    be    taken    from    the    said    John    Knox,    who. 


26  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

although  unwillingly,   obeyed,  and  returned   with  Hugh  Douglas 
of  Longniddrie. '  * 

The  same  night  Wishart  was  arrested  by  the  Earl  of 
Bothwell,  and  afterwards  handed  oyer  to  the  Cardinal 
Archbishop,  tried  by  him  as  a  heretic,  and  on  ist  March 
1546  burned  in  front  of  his  castle  of  St  Andrews. 
Ere  long  this  stronghold  was  stormed,  and  the  Cardinal 
murdered  in  his  own  chamber  by  a  number  of  the 
gentlemen  of  Fife,  whose  raid  was  partly  in  revenge 
for  Wishart's  death.  They  shut  themselves  up  in  the 
castle  for  protection,  and  we  hear  no  more  of  John 
Knox  till  the  following  year.  Then  we  are  told  that, 
*  wearied  of  removing  from  place  to  place,  by  reason 
of  the  persecution  that  came  upon  him  by  the  Bishop 
of  St  Andrews,'  he  joined  Leslie's  band  in  their  hold  in 
St  Andrews,  in  consequence  of  the  desire  of  his  pupils' 
parents  'that  himself  might  have  the  benefit  of  the 
castle,  and  their  children  the  benefit  of  his  doctrine 
[teaching].'  It  is  plain  that  by  this  time  what  Knox 
taught  was  the  doctrine  of  Wishart.  Indeed  he  had  not 
been  long  in  St  Andrews  when,  urged  by  the  congregation 
there,  he  consented  to  become  its  preacher.  And  his 
very  first  sermon  in  this  capacity  rang  out  the  full  note 
of  the  coming  reform  or  rather  revolution  in  the  religion 
of  Scotland. 

Now,  this  is  a  startlingly  sudden  transition.  The 
change  from  the  position  of  a  nameless  notary  under 
Papal  authority,  who  is  in  addition  a  minister  of  the 
altar  of  the  Catholic  Church,  to  that  of  a  preacher  in 
the  whole  armour  of  the  Puritan  Reformation,  is  great. 

*  The  quotations  are  from  Knox  himself— in  the  first  book  of  his 
'  History  of  the  Reformation  in  Scotland.' 

When  quoting  from  any  part  of  Knox's  'Works'  (David  Laing's 
edition  in  six  volumes),  I  propose  to  modernise  the  spelling,  but  in 
other  respects  to  retain  Knox's  English.  It  will  be  found  surpris- 
ingly modem. 


JOHN  KNOX  27 

Was  the  transition  a  public  and  official  one  only  ?  Was 
it  a  change  merely  ecclesiastical  or  political  ?  Or  was  it 
preceded  by  a  more  private  change  and  a  personal  crisis  ? 
And  was  that  private  and  personal  crisis  merely  intel- 
lectual ?  Was  it,  that  is,  the  adoption  of  a  new  dogma 
only,  or  perhaps  the  acceptance  of  a  new  system  ?  Or  if 
there  was  something  besides  these,  was  it  nothing  more 
than  the  resolve  of  a  very  powerful  will — such  a  will  as 
we  must  all  ascribe  to  Knox?  Was  this  all?  Or  was  there 
here  rather,  perhaps,  the  sort  of  change  which  determines 
the  will  instead  of  being  determined  by  it — a  personal 
change,  in  the  sense  of  being  emotional  and  inward  as 
well  as  deep  and  permanent — a  new  set  of  the  whole 
man,  and  so  the  beginning  of  an  inner  as  well  as  of  an 
outer  and  public  life  ? 

The  question  is  of  the  highest  interest,  but  as  we 
have  said,  there  is  no  direct  answer.  It  would  be  easy 
for  each  reader  to  supply  the  void  by  reasoning  out, 
according  to  his  own  prepossessions,  what  must  have 
been,  or  what  ought  to  have  been,  the  experience  of 
such  a  man  at  such  a  time.  It  would  be  easy — but 
unprofitable.  Far  better  would  it  be  could  we  adduce 
from  his  own  utterances  evidence — indirect  evidence 
even — that  the  crisis  which  he  declines  to  record  really 
took  place ;  and  that  the  great  outward  career  was 
founded  on  a  new  personal  life  within.  Now  there  is 
such  an  utterance,  which  has  been  hitherto  by  no  means 
sufficiently  recognised.  It  is  'a  meditation  or  prayer, 
thrown  forth  of  my  sorrowful  heart  and  pronounced  by 
my  half-dead  tongue,'  on  12th  March,  1566,  at  a 
moment  when  Knox's  cause  was  in  extremity  of  danger. 
Mary  had  joined  the  Catholic  League  and  driven  the 
Protestant  Lords  into  England,  and  their  attempted 
counter-plot  had  failed  by  the  defection  of  Darnley.  Knox 
had  now  before  him  certain  exile  and  possible  death, 
and  on  the  eve  of  leaving  Edinburgh  he  sat  down  and 


28  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

wrote  privately  the  following  personal  confession.  Five 
years  later,  when  publishing  his  last  book,  after  the 
national  victory  but  amid  great  public  troubles,  he  pre- 
fixed a  preface  explaining  that  he  had  already  *  taken 
goodnight  at  the  world  and  at  all  the  fasherie  of  the 
same,'  and  henceforward  wished  his  brethren  only  to  pray 
that  God  would  *  put  an  end  to  my  long  and  painful 
battle.'  And  with  this  preface  he  now  printed  the  old 
meditation  or  confession  of  1566.  It  is  therefore  auto- 
biographical by  a  double  title.  And  it  is  made  even 
more  interesting  by  the  striking  rubric  with  which  the 
writer  heads  it. 

John  Knox,  with  deliberate  mind,  to  his  God. 
*  Be  merciful  unto  me,  O  Lord,  and  call  not  into  judgment  my 
manifold  sins  ;  and  chiefly  those  whereof  the  world  is  not  able  to 
accuse  me.  In  youth,  mid  age,  and  now  after  many  battles,  I  find 
nothing  in  me  but  vanity  and  corruption.  For,  in  quietness  I  am 
negligent ;  in  trouble  impatient,  tending  to  desperation  ;  and  in  the 
mean  [middle]  state  I  am  so  carried  away  with  vain  fantasies,  that 
alas  !  O  Lord,  they  withdraw  me  from  the  presence  of  thy  Majesty. 
Pride  and  ambition  assault  me  on  the  one  part,  covetousness  and 
malice  trouble  me  on  the  other ;  briefly,  O  Lord,  the  affections  of 
the  flesh  do  almost  suppress  the  operation  of  Thy  Spirit.  I  take 
Thee,  O  Lord,  who  only  knowest  the  secrets  of  hearts,  to  record, 
that  in  none  of  the  foresaid  do  I  delight  ;  but  that  with  them  I  am 
troubled,  and  that  sore  against  the  desire  of  my  inward  man,  which 
sobs  for  my  corruption,  and  would  repose  in  Thy  mercy  alone.  To 
the  which  I  clame  [cry]  in  the  promise  that  Thou  hast  made  to  all 
penitent  sinners  (of  whose  number  I  profess  myself  to  be  one),  in 
the  obedience  and  death  of  my  only  Saviour,  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 
In  whom,  by  Thy  mere  grace,  I  doubt  not  myself  to  be  elected  to 
eternal  salvation,  whereof  Thou  hast  given  unto  me  (unto  me,  O 
Lord,  most  wretched  and  unthankful  creature)  most  assured  signs. 
For  being  drowned  in  ignorance  Thou  hast  given  to  me  knowledge 
above  the  common  sort  of  my  brethren  ;  my  tongue  hast  Thou  used 
to  set  forth  Thy  gloiy,  to  oppugne  idolatry,  errors,  and  false  doctrine. 
Thou  hast  compelled  me  to  forespeak,  as  well  deliverance  to  the 
afflicted,   as   destruction   to   certain   inobedient,    the   performance 


JOHN  KNOX  29 

whereof,  not  I  alone,  but  the  very  blind  world  has  already  seen. 
But  above  all,  O  Lord,  Thou,  by  the  power  of  Thy  Holy  Spirit, 
hast  sealed  unto  my  heart  remission  of  my  sins,  which  I  acknowledge 
and  confess  myself  to  have  received  by  the  precious  blood  of  Jesus 
Christ  once  shed ;  in  whose  perfect  obedience  I  am  assured  my 
manifold  rebellions  are  defaced,  my  grievous  sins  purged,  and  my 
soul  made  the  tabernacle  of  Thy  Godly  Majesty — Thou,  O  Father 
of  mercies,  Thy  Son  our  Lord  Jesus,  my  only  Saviour,  Mediator, 
and  Advocate,  and  Thy  Holy  Spirit,  remaining  in  the  same  by  true 
faith,  which  is  the  only  victory  that  overcometh  the  world.'* 

This  window  into  the  heart  of  a  great  man  is  not  less 
transparent  because  it  opens  upwards.  Its  revelation  of 
an  inner  life,  with  the  alternations  proper  to  it  of  struggle 
and  victory,  will  receive  confirmation  as  we  go  on. 
As  we  go  on  too  we  shall  be  arrested  by  the  intense 
personal  sympathy  which  Knox  showed  in  helping  those 
around  him  who  were  still  weaker  and  more  tempted 
than  himself — a  sympathy  in  which  many  will  find  a 
surer  proof  of  the  existence  of  a  life  within,  than  even 
in  this  record  of  his  deliberate  and  devotional  mind. 
What  this  record  now  suggests  to  us  is  that  the  personal 
life  which  it  reveals  had  a  foundation  in  some  personal 
and  moral  crisis.  The  truth  and  hght  came  to  him  when 
he  was  'drowned  in  ignorance,'  and  the  change  cannot 
have  originated  in  any  fancy  as  to  his  own  predestina- 
tion, or  in  any  foresight  by  himself  of  his  own  public 
services.  The  foundation,  as  it  is  put  by  Knox,  was 
deeper,  and  was,  in  his  view,  common  to  him  with  all 
Christian  men.  It  is  a  transaction  of  the  individual 
with  the  Divine,  in  which  the  man  comes  to  God  by 
*  true  faith.'  And  this  faith  is,  or  ought  to  be,  absolute 
and  assured,  simply  because  it  is  faith  in  the  offer  and 
promise  of  God  himself  in  his  Evangel.  This  was  the 
teaching  of  Wishart,  as  it  had  been  of  Patrick  Hamilton 
before  him.     It  was  the  teaching  which  Hamilton  had 

*  ♦  Works,'  vi.  483. 


30  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

derived  from  Luther,  and  Wishart  from  both  Luther  and 
the  Reformers  of  Switzerland.  Later  on,  when  the  minor 
differences  between  the  two  schools  of  Protestantism 
had  declared  themselves,  it  might  fairly  be  said  that 
Knox,  and  with  him  Scotland,  founded  their  religion 
not  so  much  (with  Luther)  on  the  central  doctrine  of 
immediate  access  to  God  through  his  promise,  as  (with 
Calvin)  on  the  more  general  doctrine  of  the  immediate 
authority  of  God  through  his  word.  But  the  former — 
the  Evangel — was  the  original  life  and  light  of  the 
Reformation  every^vhere,  and  its  glow  as  of  '  glad  con- 
fident morning '  now  flushed  the  whole  sky  of  Western 
Europe.*  Knox  himself  always  preached  it,  and  on  the 
very  day  of  his  death  he  let  fall  an  expression  which 
indicates  that  his  acceptance  of  it  had  rescued  him 
at  this  very  date  from  the  tossings  of  an  inward  sea. 
;  *  Go,  read  where  I  cast  my  first  anchor  ! '  he  said  to  his 
wife.  'And  so  she  read  the  seventeenth  of  John's 
Gospel.'  Now  the  *  Evangel  of  John '  was  what  Knox 
tells  us  he  taught  from  day  to  day  in  the  chapel,  within 
the  Castle  of  St  Andrews,  at  a  certain  hour  ;  and  when 

*  *The  end  and  intent  of  the  Scripture,'  according  to  the 
translation  by  George  Wishart,  Knox's  earliest  master,  of  the  First 
Helvetic  or  Swiss  Confession,  is,  *  to  declare  that  God  is  benevolent 
and  friendly-minded  to  mankind  ;  and  that  he  hath  declared  that 
kindness  in  and  through  Jesu  Christ,  his  only  Son  ;  the  which 
kindness  is  received  by  faith ;  but  this  faith  is  effectuous  through 
charity,  and  expressed  in  an  innocent  life.'  And  even  more 
strikingly,  the  very  first  question  of  the  famous  Palatinate  Catechism 
for  Churches  and  Schools,  though  that  catechism  is  Calvinistic  in  its 
conception  rather  than  Lutheran,  and  came  out  so  late  as  1563, 
bursts  out  as  follows  : — 

*  What  is  thy  only  comfort  in  life  and  death  ? 

*  Ans.  That  I,  with  body  and  soul,  both  in  life  and  death,  am 
not  my  own,  but  belong  to  my  faithful  Saviour,  Jesus  Christ,  who 
with  his  precious  blood  has  fully  satisfied  for  all  my  sins,  and 
redeemed  me  from  all  the  power  of  the  Devil.' 


JOHN  KNOX  31 

on  entering  the  city  he  took  up  this  book  of  the  New 
Testament,  he  took  it  up  at  the  point  'where  he  left 
at  his  departure  from  Longniddry  where  before  his 
residence  was,'  and  whither  Wishart  had  sent  him  back 
to  his  pupils  a  year  before.  And  of  all  parts  of  this 
Evangel,  the  rock-built  anchorage  of  the  seventeenth 
chapter  may  surely  best  claim  to  be  that  commemorated 
in  Knox's  stately  and  deliberate  words. 

But  these  conjectures  must  not  make  us  forget  the 
fact  that  Knox  himself  places  an  undoubted  and  great 
crisis  at  the  threshold  of  his  pubHc  life.  His  teach- 
ing in  1547  of  John's  Gospel,  and  of  a  certain 
'catechism,'  though  carried  on  within  the  walls,  some- 
times of  the  chapel,  and  sometimes  of  the  parish  kirk, 
of  St  Andrews,  was  supposed  to  be  private  or  tutorial. 
Soon,  however,  the  more  influential  men  there  urged  him 
'  that  he  would  take  the  preaching  place  upon  him.  But 
he  utterly  refused,  alleging  that  he  would  not  run  where 
God  had  not  called  him.  .  .  .  Whereupon,  they  privily 
among  themselves  advising,  having  with  them  in  council 
Sir  David  Lindsay  of  the  Mount,  they  concluded  that 
they  would  give  a  charge  to  the  said  John,  and  that 
publicly  by  the  mouth  of  their  preacher.'  And  so,  after  a 
siermon  turning  on  the  power  of  the  church  or  con- 
gregation to  call  men  to  the  ministry, 

'  The  said  John  Rough,  preacher,  directed  his  words  to  the  said 
John  Knox,  saying,  *'  Brother,  ye  shall  not  be  offended,  albeit  that 
I  speak  unto  you  that  which  I  have  in  charge,  even  from  all  those 
that  are  here  present,  which  is  this  :  In  the  name  of  God,  and  ot 
His  Son  Jesus  Christ,  and  in  the  name  of  these  that  presently  call 
you  by  my  mouth,  I  charge  you  that  you  refuse  not  this  holy  voca- 
tion, but  .  .  .  that  you  take  upon  you  the  public  office  and  charge 
of  preaching,  even  as  you  look  to  avoid  God's  heavy  displeasure,  and 
desire  that  He  shall  multiply  His  graces  with  you."  And  in  the 
end,  he  said  to  those  that  were  present,  **  Was  not  this  your  charge 
to  me?  And  do  ye  not  approve  this  vocation?"  They  answered, 
"It  was:  and  we  approve  it."    Whereat  the  said  John,  abashed, 


32  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

burst  forth  in  most  abundant  tears,  and  withdrew  himself  to  his 
chamber.  His  countenance  and  behaviour,  from  that  day  till  the 
day  that  he  was  compelled  to  present  himself  to  the  public  place 
of  preaching,  did  sufficiently  declare  the  grief  and  trouble  of  his 
heart ;  for  no  man  saw  any  sign  of  mirth  in  him,  neither  yet  had  he 
pleasure  to  accompany  any  man,  many  days  together.'* 

There  is  no  reason  to  think  that  Knox  exaggerates  the 
importance  of  this  scene  in  his  own  history.  A  man  has 
but  one  life,  and  the  choosing  even  of  his  secular  work 
in  it  is  sometimes  so  difficult  as  to  make  him  welcome 
any  external  compulsion.  But  the  necessity  of  an 
external  and  even  a  divine  vocation,  in  order  to 
justify  a  man's  devoting  his  life  to  handling  things 
divine,  has  long  been  a  tradition  of  the  Christian 
Church — and  especially  of  the  Scottish  church,  which 
in  its  parts,  and  as  a  whole,  has  been  repeatedly  con- 
vulsed by  this  question  of  'The  Call.'  And  in 
Knox's  time,  as  in  the  earliest  age  of  Christianity, 
what  is  now  a  tradition  was  a  very  stern  fact.  The 
men  who  were  thus  calling  him  knew  well,  and  Knox 
himself,  more  clear  of  vision  than  any  of  them,  knew 
better,  that  what  they  were  inviting  him  to  was  in  all 
probability  a  violent  death.  Rough  himself  perished  in 
the  flames  at  Smithfield;  and  four  months  after  this 
vocation  Knox  was  sitting  chained  and  half-naked  in 
the  galleys  at  Rouen,  under  the  lash  of  a  French  slave- 
driver.  He  did  not  perhaps  himself  always  remember 
how  the  future  then  appeared  to  him.  Old  men  looking 
back  upon  their  past  are  apt  *to  see  in  their  life  the 
story  of  their  life,'  and  the  Reformer,  after  his  later 
amazing  victories,  sometimes  speaks  as  if  these  had 
been  his  in  hope,  or  even  in  promise,  from  the  outset 
of  his  career.  But  it  is  plain  to  us  now,  as  we  study 
his  letters  in  those  early  years,  that  he  was  repeatedly 
brought  to  accept  what  we  know  to  have  been  the  real 

*  *  Works, 'i.  187. 


JOHN  KNOX  33 

probability — viz.,  that,  while  the  ultimate  triumph  of  the 
Evangel  would  be  secure,  it  might  be  brought  about  only 
after  his  own  failure  and  ruin.  Such  were  the  alterna- 
tives which  Knox — a  man  of  undoubted  sensitiveness 
and  tenderness,  and  who  describes  himself  as  naturally 
*  fearful '  * — had  to  ponder  during  those  days  of  seclusion 
at  St  Andrews.  Of  one  thing  he  had  no  doubt.  The 
call,  if  once  he  accepted  it,  was  irrevocable ;  f  and  he 
must  thenceforward  go  straight  on,  abandoning  the  many 
resources  of  silence  and  of  flight  which  might  still  be 
open  to  a  private  man. 

But  this  was  not  all.  It  would  be  doing  injustice  to 
Knox,  and  to  our  materials,  to  suppose  that  personal 
considerations  were  the  only  ones  which  pressed  upon 

*  On  his  death-bed.  The  Regent  Morton's  famous  epitaph  spoken 
by  Knox's  grave,  is  an  imperfect  echo  of  what  the  Reformer  ten 
days  before,  in  bidding  farewell  to  the  Kirk  (Session)  of  Edinburgh, 
had  said  of  his  own  past  career  : — '  In  respect  that  he  bore  God's 
message,  to  whom  he  must  make  account  for  the  same,  he  (albeit  he 
was  weak  and  an  unworthy  creature,  aizd  a  fearful  man)  feared  not 
the  faces  of  men.' — '  Works,'  vi.  637. 

t  One  of  the  most  eloquent  documents  of  the  time  is  the  address 
in  1565  to  the  half-starved  ministers  of  the  Kirk  (inspired  and 
perhaps  written  by  Knox),  urging  that  having  put  their  hands  to  the 
plough,  they  could  not  look  back  : — 

'  God  hath  honoured  us  so,  that  men  have  judged  us  the  messengers 
of  the  Everlasting.  By  us  hath  He  disclosed  idolatry,  by  us  are  the 
wicked  of  the  world  rebuked,  and  by  us  hath  our  God  comforted  the 
consciences  of  many.  .  .  .  And  shall  we  for  poverty  leave  the  flock 
of  Jesus  Christ  before  that  it  utterly  refuse  us  ?  .  .  .  The  price  of 
Jesus  Christ,  his  death  and  passion,  is  committed  to  our  charge,  the 
■eyes  of  men  are  bent  upon  us,  and  we  must  answer  before  that  Judge. 
,.  .  .  He  preserved  us  in  the  darkness  of  our  mothers'  bosom,  He 
provided  our  food  in  their  breasts,  and  instructed  us  to  use  the  same, 
when  we  knew  Him  not.  He  hath  nourished  us  in  the  time  of  blind- 
i:oess  and  of  impiety ;  and  will  He  now  despise  us,  when  we  call 
upon  Him,  and  preach  the  glorious  Gospel  of  His  dear  Son  our 
Lord  Jesus?' — 'Works,' vi.  425. 
4  c 


34  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

him  in  this  crisis.  He  never,  in  any  circumstances, 
could  have  been  a  man  of  'a  private  spirit,'  and  his 
present  call  was  expressly  to  bear  the  public  burden. 
But  the  burden  so  proposed  was  overwhelming.  Was 
it  by  his  mouth  that  his  countrymen  were  to  be  urged 
to  expose  themselves,  individually,  to  certain  danger  and 
possible  ruin  ?  AVas  it  upon  his  initiative  that  his  country 
was  to  be  divided,  distracted,  and  probably  destroyed — 
deprived  of  its  old  faith,  severed  from  its  old  alliances, 
and  hurled  into  revolt  from  its  five  hundred  years  of 
Christian  peace?*  The  risk  to  his  country  was  extreme. 
And  if,  by  some  marvellous  conspiration  of  providences, 
Scotland  passed  through  all  this  without  ruin,  was 
Knox  prepared  to  face  the  more  tremendous  respon- 
sibilities of  success  ?  Did  he  hear  in  that  hour  the 
voice  by  which  leaders  of  Movements  in  later  days  have 
been  chilled,  '  Thou  couldst  a  people  raise,  but  couldst 
not  rule?'  For  if  we  assume  that  he  felt  entitled  to 
throw  back  this  weight  of  leadership  upon  God  and 
God's  Evangel,  the  question  still  remained.  Was  even  the 
Evangel  strong  enough  to  bear  this  burden  of  a  nation's 
future  ?  That  it  was  able  to  guide  and  save  the  indi- 
vidual man,  through  all  changes  and  chances  of  this  life 

*  Severi  years  after  this  time,  Knox,  writing  from  abroad  to  *  his 
sisters  in  Edinburgh,'  tells  of  the  *  cogitations '  which  God  permitted 
Satan  even  at  that  late  date  to  put  into  his  mind — 

*  Shall  Christ,  the  author  of  peace,  concord,  and  quietness,  be: 
preached  where  war  is  proclaimed,  sedition  engendered,  and  tumults 
appear  to  rise.  Shall  not  His  Evangel  be  accused  as  the  cause  of 
all  calamity  which  is  like  to  follow  ?    What  comfort  canst  thou  have 

"  to  see  the  one-half  of  the  people  rise  up  against  the  other  :  yea,  to 
jeopard  the  one  to  murder  and  destroy  the  other?  But  above  allj, 
what  joy  shall  it  be  to  thy  heart  to  behold  with  thine  eyes  thy  native 
country  betrayed  into  the  hands  of  strangers,  which  to  no  man's 
judgment  can  be  avoided,  because  they  who  ought  to  defend  it  and 
the  liberties  thereof  are  so  blind,  dull,  and  obstinate  that  they  will 
not  see  their  own  destruction  ? ' — '  Works,'  iv.  251.  ' 


JOHN  KNOX  35 

and  the  life  beyond,  Knox  may  have  been  assured.  But 
the  questions  which  rose  behind  were  those  of  Church 
organisation  and  social  reconstruction.  Was  it  possible, 
and  was  it  lawful,  to  accept  the  existing  Church  system, 
in  whole  or  in  part,  and  to  build  upon  that  ?  And  if  this 
was  impossible,  if  Christ's  Church  must  go  back  to  the 
Divine  foundation  in  His  new-discovered  Word,  was 
that  Word  sufficient,  not  for  foundation  merely,  but  for 
all  superstructure — for  doctrine,  discipline,  and  worship 
alike  ?  Or  would  the  Church  be  entitled  to  impose  its 
own  wise  and  reasonable  additions  to  the  recovered 
statute-book  of  Scripture  ?  Lastly,  if  such  a  new  Church 
shone  already  in  *  devout  imagination '  before  Knox,  he 
must  have  also  had  some  forecast  of  its  new  relations 
to  feudal  and  royal  Scotland.  Was  he  to  plead  merely 
for  freedom,  under  a  neutral  civil  authority?  Or  in 
the  event  of  the  chiefs  of  the  nation,  or  some  of  them, 
individually  adopting  the  new  faith,  were  they  to 
adopt  it  for  themselves  alone;  or  for  subjects  and 
vassals  too,  as  under  the  former  regime?  And  were 
they  to  enforce  it,  by  feudal  or  royal  or  even  legisla- 
tive authority,  on  unwilling  subjects  and  unwilling 
vassals  too  ? 

I  think  it  clear  that  all  these  questions  must  have 
passed  before  the  mind  of  Knox  during  that  week  of 
agitated  seclusion  within  the  castle  walls.  Not  only  so. 
There  is  evidence  in  his  own  writings  that  when  at  the 
close  of  that  time  he  came  forth  to  take  up  the  public 
work,  he  had  already  formed  his  conclusions  as  to  all  the 
main  principles  on  which  it  was  to  proceed.  And  from 
these  he  never  afterwards  varied.  Thirteen  years  were 
still  to  elapse  before  they  resulted  in  Scotland  in  a 
religious  revolution ;  and  during  those  years  of  wander- 
ing and  exile  Knox  learned  much  from  the  wisest  and 
best  of  the  new  leaders — much  from  them ;  and  much, 
too,  from  his  own  experience,  which  he  was  in  the  future 


36  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

to  reduce  to  details  of  practice.  But  his  principles  were 
the  same  from  the  first.  He  believed  fundamentally  in 
the  gracious  Word  of  God  revealed  to  man,  as  over- 
riding and  over-ruling  all  other  authorities.  His  first 
sermon  denounced  the  whole  existing  church  system  as 
an  Anti-Christian  substitute,  interposed  between  man 
and  that  original  message.  But,  strange  to  say,  the  part  of 
the  discourse  which  at  once  aroused  controversy  was  his 
sweeping  denial  of  the  Church's  right  to  institute  cere- 
monies, the  ground  of  denial  being  that  'man  may 
neither  make  nor  devise  a  religion  that  is  acceptable  to 
God.'  He  was  thus  Protestant  and  Puritan*  from  the 
first,  as  his  master  Wishart  was  before  him,  and  his  choice 
had  now  to  be  made  according  to  his  convictions.  We, 
looking  back  upon  the  past  at  our  ease,  may  recognise 
that  on  some  of  these  matters  he  was  too  hasty  in  his 
conclusions — especially  in   his   conclusions   as   to   his 

*  The  two  sources  which,  next  to  his  own  report  of  this  sermon, 
best  indicate  his  earliest  standpoint,  are.(i)  the  (second)  Basel  Con- 
fession— better  known  as  the  First  Confession  of  Helvetia — which 
Wishart  had  brought  with  him  from  the  Continent,  and  before  his 
death  had  translated  into  English,  and  which  Knox,  therefore,  must 
have  known  and  may  have  used  ;  and  (2)  the  treatise  of  his  friend,  the 
layman  and  lawyer,  Balnaves,  written  two  years  later,  and  which 
Knox  then  sent  from  Rouen  to  St  Andrews  with  his  own  approval 
and  abridgement.  The  former  is  distinctly  '  Reformed  '  and  Puritan, 
and  lays  down  that  all  ceremonies,  other  than  the  two  instituted 
sacraments  and  preaching,  'as  vessels,  garments,  wax-lights,  altars,' 
are  unprofitable,  and  '  serve  to  subvert  the  true  religion ' ;  while 
Balnaves  repeats  the  more  fundamental  principle  of  Knox's  sermon 
(that  all  religion  which  is  *  not  commanded,'  or  which  is  *  invented  ' 
with  the  best  motives,  is  wrong).  And  both  treatises  shew  that 
Knox  must^have  had  also  before  him  from  the  first  the  thorny  ques- 
tion of  the  relation  of  the  Church  and  the  private  Christian  to  the 
civil  magistrate — for  both  solve  it,  like  Knox  himself  (but  unlike 
Luther  in  his  original  Confession  of  Augsburg),  by  giving  the 
Magistrate  sweeping  and  intolerant  powers  of  reforming  alike  the 
religion  and  the  Church. 


JOHN  KNOX  37 

opponents,  and  the  duty  towards  them  which  the  party 
now  oppressed  would  have,  in  the  unHkely  event  of  its 
coming  into  power.  But  we  are  bound  to  remember — 
Knox  himself  insists  upon  it — that  he  did  not  take  up 
the  function  of  guide  to  his  people  at  his  own  hand,  or 
accept  it  at  his  own  leisure.  He  was  suddenly  called 
upon  in  God's  name  to  accept  or  refuse  an  almost  hope- 
less task,  but  one  in  which  success  and  failure  involved 
the  greatest  alternatives  to  him.  That  preaching  the 
Gospel  to  which  he  was  called,  if  it  meant  on  the  one 
hand,  in  the  event  of  failure,  exile  or  death,  meant  on 
the  other,  in  case  of  success,  the  salvation  of  a  whole 
people  now  sitting  in  darkness.  But  he  had  to  accept 
the  task  as  a  whole  or  to  refuse  it ;  and  his  conclusions 
as  to  what  that  task  involved  were  fused  into  unity — in 
some  respects  into  premature  unity — in  the  glow  of  a 
supreme  moral  trial.  For  the  week  of  deliberation  before 
he  emerged  as  the  teacher  of  the  Congregation  was 
certainly  not  spent  upon  detailed  difficulties  either  of 
future  legislation  or  present  consistency.  It  prolonged 
itself  rather  in  poise  and  struggle  against  the  more 
obvious  and  tremendous  obstacles,  reinforced  no  doubt 
by  a  thousand  more  remote  behind  them.  But  the 
ultimate  question  was  whether  the  gigantic  strain  of  all 
of  these  combined  would  be  too  much  for  an  anchor 
dropped  by  one  strong  hand  into  the  depths  of  the 
Evangel. 

And  so  that  week  saved  a  nation — perhaps  a  man. 

For  I  think  it  quite  a  possible  thing  that  this  crisis 
in  St  Andrews,  the  only  one  recorded  or  even  suggested 
by  Knox  himself,  may  have  been  the  one  personal  crisis 
of  his  life.  I  cannot  indeed  say  with  Carlyle,  that 
before  this  Knox  'seemed  well  content  to  guide  his 
own  steps  by  the  light  of  the  Reformation,  nowise  un- 
duly intruding  it  on  others  .  .  .  resolute  he  to  walk 
by  the  truth,  and  speak  the  truth  when  called  to  do  it ; 


38  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

not  ambitious  of  more,  not  fancying  himself  capable  of 
more.'  *  Of  all  men  living  or  dead,  this  is  the  one 
whom  it  is  most  impossible  to  think  of  as  acquiescing 
in  such  an  easy  relation  to  those  around  him,  or  even 
as  attempting  so  to  acquiesce — at  least  without  inward 
self-question  and  torture.  We  must  remember  that 
Knox  had  undoubtedly  before  this  time  embraced  the 
doctrinal  system  of  the  Reformation,  no  doubt  in  the 
form  taught  by  Wishart.  And  a  catechism  of  that  doc- 
trine, perhaps  founded  upon  or  identical  with  that  which 
Wishart  brought  from  Basel,  he  gave  to  his  East  Lothian 
pupils.  Long  before  his  external  *  call '  at  St  Andrews, 
the  inward  impulse  to  preach  the  message  to  his 
fellow-men,  and  to  champion  their  right  to  receive 
it,  must  have  pressed  upon  his  conscience.  Was 
this  pearl  worth  the  price  of  selling  all  to  buy  it? 
And  was  such  a  price  demanded  of  him  individu- 
ally? If  these  questions  were  still  unanswered — for 
that  they  had  been  put,  and  put  incessantly,  I  have  no 
doubt — then  the  Knox  whom  we  know  was  still  waiting  to 
be  born,  and  the  representative  of  Scotland  was  like  Scot- 
land itself,  '  as  yet  without  a  soul.'  f  He  had  carried  a 
sword  before  Wishart,  and  he  and  the  gentlemen  of  East 
Lothian  would  have  defended  their  saintly  guest  at  the 
peril  of  their  lives.  He  had  been  followed  thereafter 
by  the  persecution  of  his  bishop,  until  he  made  up  his 
mind  for  exile  in  Germany  (rather  than  in  England, 
where  he  heard  that  the  Romish  doctrine  flourished 
under  Royal  Supremacy).  And  after  the  'slaughter  of 
the  Cardinal,'  he  took  refuge  within  the  strong  walls  of 
the  vacant  castle,  like  other  men  whose  sympathies  made 
them,  in  the  quaint  words  of  the  chronicler,  J  *  suspect 
themselves  guilty  of  the  death '  of  Beaton,  though  they 
might  not  have  known  of  it  before  the  fact.     But  all 

*  '  Lectures  on  Heroes  :  The  Hero  as  Priest.' 
t  Carlyle,  as  above.  X  Lindsay  of  Pitscottie. 


JOHN  KNOX  39 

this  Knox  might  conceivably  have  done,  and  still  have 
borne  about  with  him  a  troubled  and  divided  mind,  until 
the  address  of  Rough  flashed  out  upon  his  conscience 
his  true  vocation,  and  sent  him  in  tears  and  solitude  to 
make  proof  of  the  Evangel — and  of  the  Evangel  in  that 
form  which  takes  hold  of  both  eternities.  This  final  crisis 
may  thus  have  been  the  only  one.  And  if  it  were  so, 
Knox  would  not  be  the  first  man  who  has  found  in  self- 
consecration  a  new  birth ;  nor  the  first  prophet  whose 
*  Here  am  I '  has  been  answered  by  fire  from  the  altar 
and  the  assurance  that  iniquity  is  purged. 

But  even  if  we  assume,  what  is  more  probable,  that 
the  crisis  in  St  Andrews  was  not  the  first,  but  the  second, 
in  Knox's  religious  life,  the  result  for  the  purposes  of 
critical  biography  is  the  same.  For  the  later  crisis  re- 
sumed and  gathered  up  into  itself,  on  a  higher  plane, 
and  with  more  intensity,  the  elements  of  the  change 
which  went  before.  It  was,  on  this  assumption,  a  new 
call ;  and  a  call  to  higher  and  public  work.  But  it  was 
a  call  in  the  same  name,  and  to  the  same  man,  to  do 
new  work  on  the  strength  of  principles  and  motives  to 
which  he  had  already  committed  himself.  It  was,  in 
short,  a  greater  strain,  but  upon  the  first  anchor. 

This  point  has  acquired  more  importance  since  Carlyle, 
and  so  many  of  us  who  follow  him  as  admirers  of  Knox, 
have  adopted  the  modern  trick  of  speech  of  calling  him 
a  Prophet  to  his  time.  It  is  assumed  that  Knox  took 
the  same  view,*  and  that  he  held  himself  to  have  had, 

*  Thus,  Mrs  M'Cunn,  in  her  charming  volume  on  Knox  as  a 
*  Leader  of  Religion,'  says  that  he  'constantly  claimed  the  position 
accorded  to  the  Hebrew  prophets,  and  claimed  it  on  the  same 
grounds  as  they.'  And  even  Dr  Hume  Brown,  when  narrating  Knox's 
refusal  in  the  Galleys  to  kiss  the  '  Idol '  presented  to  him,  adds : 
'  It  is  in  such  passages  as  these  that  we  see  how  completely  Knox 
identified  his  action  with  that  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  '  (vol.  i.  84), 
the  passage  founded  upon  being  one  in  which  Knox  points  out  that 


40  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

if  not  a  prophet's  supernatural  endowment  and  vocation, 
at  least  a  special  mission  and  an  extraordinary  call. 
The  question  is  complicated  by  other  things  than  the 
special  and  extraordinary  work  which  he,  in  point  of 
fact,  achieved.  We  find  that,  in  the  course  of  that 
work,  Knox,  a  man  of  piercing  intuitions  in  personal 
and  public  matters,  repeatedly  committed  himself  to  judg- 
ments, and  even  predictions,  which  were  unexpectedly 
verified.  And  some  of  these  he  himself  regarded,  as  we 
have  seen  already  in  his  deliberate  Meditation,  as  not 
intuitions  merely,  but  private  intimations  given  by  God 
to  his  own  heart  and  mind.  Naturally,  too,  a  man  of 
Knox's  devout  and  yet  passionate  temper  was  disposed 
to  lay  as  much  stress  upon  these  incidents  as  they  would 
bear ;  while  the  marvel-mongers  around  him,  and  in  the 
next  generation,  went  farther  still.  But  the  main  fact 
to  remember  is,  that  Knox  all  his  life  insisted  that  such 
incidents,  whatever  their  occasional  value,  were  no  part 
of  his  original  mission,  and  were  outside  the  bounds  of 
his  life-long  vocation.  The  passage  in  which  he  is  dis- 
posed to  make  most  of  them  is  the  following ;  and  it  is 
worth  quoting  also,  because  of  the  striking  terms  in 
which  he  incidentally  describes  his  real  work  and  per- 
manent call.  He  is  explaining  why,  after  twenty  years' 
preaching,  he  has  never  published  even  a  sermon,  and 
now   publishes   one  with  nothing   but  wholesome  ad- 

'  the  same  obedience  that  God  required  of  his  people  Israel,'  even 
in  idolatrous  Babylon,  was  required  by  Him  of  the  '  Scottish  men ' 
in  France,  and  was  actually  given  by  '  that  whole  number  during 
the  time  of  their  bondage,'  not  merely  by  the  one  unnamed  prisoner 
who  flung  the  painted  '  board '  into  the  Loire.  One  reason  why  the 
prisoner  is  unnamed  is  no  doubt  that  here,  as  in  a  hundred  other 
places  more  explicitly,  Knox  would  impress  us  with  the  feeling  that 
no  other  or  higher  obedience  in  such  matters  is  required  of  minister 
or  prophet  or  apostle,  than  is  required  of  the  humblest  man  or  the 
youngest  child  in  '  God's  people. 


JOHN  KNOX  41 

monitions  for  the  time.     (This  wholesome  sermon  was 
the  one  which  so  much  offended  Darnley.) 

*  Considering  myself  rather  called  of  my  God  to  instruct  the 
ignorant,  comfort  the  sorrowful,  confirm  the  weak,  and  rebuke  the 
proud,  by  tongue  and  lively  voice  in  these  most  corrupt  days,  than 
to  compose  books  for  the  age  to  come  :  seeing  that  so  much  is 
written  (and  that  by  men  of  most  singular  condition),  and  yet  so 
little  well  observed ;  I  decreed  to  contain  myself  within  the  bonds 
[bounds?]  of  that  vocation,  whereunto  I  found  myself  specially 
called.  I  dare  not  deny  (lest  that  in  so  doing  I  should  be  injurious 
to  the  giver),  but  that  God  hath  revealed  to  me  secrets  unknown  to 
the  world ;  and  also  that  he  hath  made  my  tongue  a  trumpet,  to 
forewarn  realms  and  nations,  yea,  certain  great  personages,  of 
translations  and  changes,  when  no  such  things  were  feared,  nor  yet 
were  appearing ;  a  portion  whereof  cannot  the  world  deny  (be  it 
never  so  blind)  to  be  fulfilled,  and  the  rest,  alas  !  I  fear  shall  follow 
with  greater  expedition,  and  in  more  full  perfection,  than  my  sorrow- 
ful heart  desireth.  Those  revelations  and  assurances  notwithstand- 
ing, I  did  ever  abstain  to  commit  anything  to  vi^rit,  contented  only 
to  have  obeyed  the  charge  of  Him  who  commanded  me  to  cry. '  * 

And  when  he  did  *  cry,'  from  the  pulpit  or  elsewhere, 
he  was  careful  to  found  his  claim  to  be  heard,  not  on 
private  intimations,  but  on  God's  open  word.  As  early 
as  1554  he  denounces  judgment  to  come  upon  England 
(which,  by  the  way,  was  not  fulfilled  in  the  sense  which 
he  expected),  but  he  adds  immediately — 

'  This  my  affirmation  proceedeth,  not  from  any  conjecture  of 
man's  fantasy,  but  from  the  ordinary  course  of  God's  judgments 
against  manifest  contemners  of  his  precepts  from  the  beginning  ; '  f 

and  more  fully  in  another  contemporary  document — 

'  But  ye  would  know  the  grounds  of  my  certitude :  God  grant 
that  hearing  them  ye  may  understand  and  steadfastly  believe  the 
same.  My  assurances  are  not  the  marvels  of  Merlin,  nor  yet  the 
dark  sentences  of  profane   prophesies ;  but,   i.  the  plain  truth  of 

*  '  Works,'  vi.  230..  t  '  Works,'  iii.  24^. 


42  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

God's  word,  2.  the  invincible  justice  of  the  everlasting  God,  and  3. 
the  ordinary  course  of  his  punishments  and  plagues  from  the  begin- 
ning, are  my  assurance  and  grounds. '  * 

This  was  early  in  his  career.  At  its  close  Knox,  now 
very  frail,  was  deeply  aggrieved  by  the  troubles  caused 
by  Lethington  and  Kirkaldy,  who  held  the  castle  of 
Edinburgh.  His  verbal  predictions  of  their  coming  end, 
as  reported  (after  the  event  however)  by  those  around 
his  deathbed,  and  his  assurance  at  the  same  time  of 
*  mercy  to  the  soul '  of  the  chivalrous  Kirkaldy,  are 
among  the  most  striking  incidents  of  this  kind  in  his 
life.  But  in  his  Will,  written  contemporaneously  on 
13th  May  1572,  he  says, 

*  I  am  not  ignorant  that  many  would  that  I  should  enter  into 
particular  determination  of  these  present  troubles ;  to  whom  I 
plainly  and  simply  answer,  that,  as  I  never  exceeded  the  bounds  of 
God's  Scriptures,  so  will  I  not  do,  in  this  part,  by  God's  grace.'  f 

This  did  not  prevent  him  from  freely  describing  his  old 
friends  in  the  Castle  as  murderers,  and  predicting  their 
destruction,  especially  as  they  seemed  now  to  be  planning 
a  counter-revolution  in  the  interest  of  the  exiled  Queen 
of  Scots.  They  retorted  by  accusing  him,  among  other 
things,  of  prejudging  her  and  '  entering  into  God's  secret 
counsel.'  Knox  roused  himself  to  answer  the  charges 
in  detail.     But  there  remained,  he  adds, 

*  One  thing  that  is  most  bitter  to  me,  and  most  fearful,  if  that  my 
accusers  were  able  to  prove  their  accusation,  to  wit,  that  I  proudly 
and  arrogantly  entered  into  God's  secret  counsel,  as  if  I  were  called 
thereto.  God  be  merciful  to  my  accusators,  of  their  rash  and  un- 
godly judgment  !  If  they  understood  how  fearful  my  conscience  is, 
and  ever  has  been,  to  exceed  the  bounds  of  my  vocation,  they 
would  not  so  boldly  have  accused  me.  I  am  not  ignorant  that  the 
secrets  of  God  appertain  to  Himself  alone  :  but  things  revealed  in 
His  law  appertain  to  us  and  our  children  for  ever.  What  I  have 
spoken  against  the  adultery,  against  the  murder,  against  the  pride, 

*  '  Works,'  iii.  169.  f  *  Works,*  vi.  p.  Ivi, 


JOHN  KNOX  43 

and  against  the  idolatry  of  that  wicked  woman,  I  spake  not  as  one 
that  entered  into  God's  secret  counsel,  but  being  one  (of  God's 
great  mercy)  called  to  preach  according  to  His  blessed  will,  revealed 
in  His  most  holy  word.'  * 

The  old  man's  irritation  was  most  natural.  For, 
on  the  one  hand,  his  accusers  had  hit  a  blot.  He 
was  sometimes  extremely  dogmatic,  imperious,  and 
rash  in  his  application  of  *  God's  revealed  will '  both 
to  persons  and  things.  But  the  form  in  which  they 
put  it — that  he  posed  as  a  prophet,  as  one  having  a 
special  message  from  God's  secret  counsel,  instead  of 
a  general  commission  to  proclaim  that  revealed  will — 
was  not  only  false,  but  struck  at  the  roots  of  his  whole 
life  and  work.  It  is  demonstrable  that  from  Knox's 
first  teaching  in  East  Lothian  and  first  preaching  in  St 
Andrews  onwards,  the  meaning  of  both  teaching  and 
preaching  was  a  call  to  the  common  Scottish  man,  and 
to  every  man,  to  go  to  God  direct  without  any  inter- 
mediation except  God's  open  word.f  And  I  think  it 
plain  that  this  direct  and  divine  call  to  all  was  not  only 
the  meaning  but  the  strength  of  the  message  in  Scotland 
as  elsewhere.  It  seems  to  us  now  as  if  the  burden 
which  it  laid  on  the  individual — on  frail  and  feeble 
women,  for  example,  in  that  time  of  persecution — was 
overwhelming.  It  is  most  pathetic  to  find  Knox,  when 
sitting  down  to  write  tender  and  consoling  messages  to 
those  in  such  circumstances,  pre-occupied  with  urging 
the  obligation  of  each  one  of  them  individually  to  hold 
fast,  against  possible  torture  or  death,  that  which  each 
one  had  individually  received.  But  he  never  shrank 
from  it,  or   from   pointing  out   that   such  relation   to 

*  *  Works,'  vi.  592. 

t  The  right  of  every  man  to  do  so,  and  his  duty  to  do  so,  were 
both  there :  the  only  question  might  be  whether,  of  the  two,  the  right 
to  do  it  (as  with  Luther),  or  the  duty  to  do  it  (as  with  Calvin)  was 
first  and  fundamental. 


44  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

God  himself  was  the  noblest  privileg'^-  And  the  evi- 
dence is  plain  that  all  over  the  Europe  of  that  age 
this  reception  of  a  Divine  message  direct  to  the  indi- 
vidual, in  the  newly  opened  Scriptures,  was,  not  a 
burden,  but  a  source  of  incomparable  energy  and  ex- 
hilaration— alike  to  men  and  women,  to  the  simple  and 
the  learned,  to  the  young  and — stranger  still — to  the  old. 
Knox  knew  it ;  and  he  knew  that  his  claiming  a  special 
message  or  ambassadorship  would  be,  not  so  much 
*  exceeding  the  bounds '  of  his  vocation,  as  denying  it 
altogether.  He  was  imperious  and  dogmatic  by  nature ; 
and  he  took  these  natural  qualities  with  him  into  his 
new  work.  But  he  would  have  shuddered  at  the  idea  of 
formally  interposing  his  own  personality  between  the 
hearers  of  that  time  and  the  message  which  they  re- 
ceived. And  he  would  have  regarded  the  office  of  a 
mere  prophet — the  bearer,  that  is,  of  a  special  message, 
even  though  that  message  be  divine — as  a  degradation, 
if,  in  order  to  attain  it,  he  had  to  lay  down  the  preaching 
of  *  that  doctrine  and  that  heavenly  religion,  whereof  it 
hath  pleased  His  merciful  providence  to  make  me^  among 
others^  a  simple  soldier  and  witness-bearer  unto  men.^  * 

Does  it  follow  that  Knox — who  thus  rejected  strongly 
the  idea  of  being  a  prophet  to  his  time,  and  insisted 
instead  upon  his  merely  receiving  and  transmitting  the 
one  message  which  was  common  to  all — that  this  man 
was  therefore  little  more  to  his  age  than  any  other 
might  be  ?  By  no  means.  The  same  message  comes 
to  all  men  in  an  age,  and  is  received  by  many,  but  it 
is  received  by  each  in  a  different  way.f  And  the  way 
in  which  this  message  was  then  received  by  one  man  in 
East  Lothian  made  all  the  difference  to  Scotland,  and 
perhaps  to  Europe.  It  must  not  be  forgotten,  indeed, 
that  the  result  of  it  upon  Knox  himself  was  to  transform 
him.     So  certain  is  this  that  some  have  felt  as  if  this 

*  •  Works, '  iii.  155.  f  Red  pitur  in  modum  recipientis. 


JOHN  KNOX  45 

were  the  case  of  one  who,  up  to  about  his  fortieth  year, 
was  an  ordinary,  commonplace,  and  representative  Scots- 
man, and  was  thereafter  changed  utterly,  but  only  by 
being  filled  with  the  sacred  fire  of  conviction.  This  is 
only  about  half  the  truth,  though  it  is  an  important  half 
— to  Knox  himself  by  far  the  more  important.  But  it  is 
not  the  whole,  and  it  is  far  from  the  whole  y^/'  us.  The 
author  who  has  enabled  us  to  see  his  own  confused  and 
changing  age  under  '  the  broad  clear  light  of  that  wonder- 
ful book'*  the  '  History  of  the  Reformation  in  Scotland,' 
and  who  outside  that  book  was  the  utterer  of  many  an 
armed  and  winged  word  which  pursues  and  smites  us  to 
this  day,  must  have  been  born  with  nothing  less  than 
genius — genius  to  observe,  to  narrate,  and  to  judge. 
Even  had  he  written  as  a  mere  recluse  and  critic, 
looking  out  upon  his  world  from  a  monk's  cell  or  from 
the  corner  of  a  housetop,  the  vividness,  the  tenderness, 
the  sarcasm  and  the  humour  would  still  have  been  there. 
But  Knox's  genius  was  predominantly  practical ;  and  the 
difference  between  the  transformation  which  befell  him, 
and  that  which  changed  so  many  other  men  in  his  time, 
was  that  in  Knox's  case  it  changed  one  who  was  born 
to  be  a  statesman.  He  probably  never  would  have  be- 
come one,  but  for  the  light  which  for  him  as  for  the  others 
made  all  things  new.  But  in  the  others  it  resulted  in  a 
self-consecration  whose  outlook  was  chiefly  upon  the 
next  world,  and  in  the  present  was  doubtfully  bounded 
by  possible  martyrdom  and  possible  evasion  or  escape. 
In  the  case  of  Knox  the  instinctive  outlook  was  not  for 
himself  only,  but  for  others  and  for  his  country.  And 
while  he  saw  from  the  first,  far  more  clearly  than  they, 
the  embattled  strength  of  the  forces  with  which  they  all 

*  John  Hill  Burton's  *  History  oi  Scotland,'  iii.  339.  He  adds, 
*  There  certainly  is  in  the  English  language  no  other  parallel  to  it 
in  the  clearness,  vigour,  and  picturesqueness  with  which  it  renders 
the  history  of  a  stirring  period.' 


46  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

had  to  contend,  the  unbending  will  of  this  man  rejected 
all  idea  of  concession  or  compromise,  evasion  or  escape. 
And  his  native  sagacity  (made  keener  as  well  as  more 
comprehensive  now  that  it  looked  down  from  that  re- 
mote and  stormless  anchorage),  revealed  to  him  that 
there  was  at  least  the  possibility  of  the  mightiest  earthly 
fabric  breaking  up  before  him  in  unexpected  collapse. 

Our  conclusion  then  must  be  that  the  call  which 
Knox  received  was  one  common  to  him  with  every  man 
and  woman  of  that  time — to  accept  the  Evangel — and 
common  to  him  with  every  preacher  of  that  time — to 
preach  the  Evangel ;  but  that  this  man's  large  concep- 
tion of  what  such  a  call  practically  meant,  not  for 
himself  alone,  but  for  all  around  him  and  for  his 
country,  made  it  from  the  first  for  him  a  public  call, 
and  compelled  him  to  hear  in  the  invitation  of  the  St 
Andrews  congregation  the  divine  commission  for  his 
life-long  work.  From  the  first,  and  in  conception  as 
well  as  execution,  that  work  was  great  and  revolutionary. 
And  from  the  first,  and  in  its  very  plan,  it  involved 
serious  errors.  But  Knox  himself,  in  this  and  every 
stage  of  his  career,  claimed  to  be  judged  by  no  lower 
tribunal  than  that  Authority  whose  dread  and  strait 
command  he  at  the  first  accepted.  And  if  there  are 
some  things  in  that  career  which  his  country  has  simply 
to  forgive,  we  shall  not  reckon  among  these  the  original 
resolve  of  that  day  in  St  Andrews — a  resolve  which 
has  made  Knox  more  to  Scotland  *  than  any  million  of 
unblameable  Scotchmen  who  need  no  forgiveness.' 

But  there  are  few  who  will  doubt  the  sincerity,  or  the 
strength,  of  the  impulse  which  launched  Knox  upon  his 
public  career.  There  are  many  however  who,  recog- 
nising that  he  was  a  great  public  man,  doubt  persistently 
whether  he  was  anything  more.  They  are  not  satisfied 
with  the  evidence  of  trumpet-tones  from  the  pulpit,  or 


JOHN  KNOX  47 

of  solemn  and  passionate  prayer  at  some  crisis  of  a 
career.  These  are  part  of  the  furniture  of  the  orator, 
the  statesman,  and  the  prophet.  Was  there  a  private 
life  at  all,  as  distinguished  from  the  inner  side  of  that 
which  was  public  ?  And  was  that  private  life  genuine  and 
tender  and  strong  ?  Have  we  another  window  into  this 
man's  breast — opening  in  this  case,  not  upwards  and  God- 
wards,  but  towards  the  men — or  women — around  him  ? 
We  have :  and  it  is  fortunate  that  the  evidence  on  this 
subject  is  found,  not  at  a  late  date  in  Knox's  life,  as  is 
the  Meditation  of  1565,  but  close  to  the  threshold  of 
his  career. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  INNER  LIFE  :    HIS  WOMEN  FRIENDS 

Before  the  age  with  which  we  are  dealing  there  was, 
throughout  Europe,  a  certain  barrier  between  the  reHgious 
hfe  on  the  one  hand  and  the  domestic  and  private  Ufe 
— the  ordinary  vie  intinie — on  the  other.  Among  the 
men  and  women  of  the  new  era  that  barrier  was  broken 
down.  The  rehgious  was  no  longer  a  recognised  class  : 
religion  was  no  longer  a  luxury  for  the  few,  or  to  be 
partaken  of  in  sacred  places  and  at  fixed  days  and  hours. 
The  common  man,  if  a  Christian  man  at  all,  was  to  be 
so  now  in  his  common  and  daily  life,  living  it  out  from 
day  to  day  on  the  deepest  principles  and  from  the 
highest  motives.  And  the  Christian  woman,  having  a 
similar  and  an  equal  vocation,  undertook  the  like  respon- 
sibilities. But  her  responsibilities  were  in  that  age  of 
transition  very  perplexing,  and  more  than  ever  invited 
friendly  counsel  and  pastoral  care.  Now  what  was  John 
Knox's  private  life?  He  was  twice  married,  and  we 
know  from  his  correspondence  that  even  before  his  first 
marriage  there  were  women  of  high  position  and  character 
to  whom  he  sustained  what  may  be  called  personal  and 
pastoral  relations.  Have  we  any  documents  from  that 
time  by  which  to  illustrate,  and  perhaps  to  test,  the 
principles  of  his  inward  and  personal  life,  before  we  go 
on  to  find  these  written  large  in  the  scroll  of  his  country's 
history  ? 

Norham  Castle,  near  Berwick,  is  still  a  very  striking 
pile,  especially  to  those  who  come  upon  it,  as  the  writer 
48 


JOHN  KNOX  49 

did,  after  four  days  leisurely  walking  down  the  banks  of 
the  great  border  river.  Every  curve  of  the  stream  had 
its  natural  beauty  intertwined  with  some  association  of 
history  or  the  poets,  from  the  first  morning  on  Neidpath 
Fell,  to  the  fourth  evening  when 

'  Day  set  on  Norham's  castled  steep, 
And  Tweed's  fair  river,  broad  and  deep. 

And  Cheviot's  mountains  lone. 
The  battled  towers,  the  donjon  keep. 
The  loophole  grates  where  captives  weep, 
The  flanking  walls  that  round  it  sweep ' — 

are  all  still  there,  though  the  inmates  are  no  longer 
captives.  Norham  is,  indeed,  best  known  as  the  scene 
of  the  whole  of  the  first  canto  of  '  Marmion.'  In 
that  poem  Sir  Hugh  the  Heron  is  supposed  to  have 
been  Lord  of  it,  while  his  wife  is  away  in  Scotland, 
prepared  to  sing  ballads  of  Lochinvar  to  the  ill-fated 
King  on  his  last  evening  in  Holyrood.  But  when 
Knox,  delivered  from  the  galleys,  preached  in  Berwick 
in  1549,  the  Captain  of  the  Hold  of  Norham,  only 
six  miles  off,  was  Richard  Bowes.  And  his  lady,  born 
Elizabeth  Aske,  and  co-heiress  of  Aske  in  Yorkshire 
(already  an  elderly  woman  and  mother  of  fifteen  chil- 
dren)^ became  Knox's  chief  friend,  and  after  he  left 
Berwick  for  Newcastle  his  correspondent,  chiefly  as  to 
her  religious  troubles.  Most  of  the  letters  of  Knox  to 
her  which  are  preserved  are  in  the  year  1553,  and  one 
of  the  earliest  of  these  acknowledges  a  communication 
'  from  you  and  my  dearest  spouse.'  This  means  that 
Marjory  Bowes,  the  fifth  daughter  in  that  large  house- 
hold, had  already  been  sponsa  or  betrothed,  with  her 
mother's  consent,  to  the  Scottish  preacher.  Knox, 
now  forty-eight  years  old,  had  recently  declined  an 
English  bishopric,  offered  him  through  the  Duke  of 
Northumberland,   but  was  still  chaplain  to  the   King. 


50  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

A  letter  to  Marjory,  undated,  follows,  in  which  he  ex- 
plains to  his  *  dearly  beloved  sister '  some  passages  of 
Scripture,  and  adds — *  The  Spirit  of  God  shall  instruct 
your  heart  what  is  most  comfortable  to  the  troubled 
conscience  of  your  mother.'  This  communication  ends 
with  the  subdued  or  sly  postscript,  '  I  think  this  be  the 
first  letter  that  ever  I  wrote  to  you.'  *  In  July,  while 
Knox  was  in  London,  Mary  Tudor  ascended  the  throne, 
and  everything  began  to  look  threatening.  In  Sep- 
tember Knox  acknowledges  the  '  boldness  and  con- 
stancy' of  Mrs  Bowes  in  pushing  his  cause  with  her 
husband,  who  was  as  yet  '  unconvinced  in  religion,'  but 
he  urges  her  not  to  trouble  herself  too  much  in  the 
matter.  He  would  himself  press  for  the  betrothal  being 
changed  into  marriage,  or  at  least  acknowledged.  '  It 
becomes  me  now  to  jeopard  my  life  for  the  comfort  and 
deliverance  of  my  own  flesh,  as  that  I  will  do  by  God's 
grace ;  both  fear  and  friendship  of  all  earthly  creature 
laid  aside.'t  Mrs  Bowes  suggested  that,  in  addition  to 
writing  her  husband,  he  should  lay  his  case  before  an 
elder  brother.  Sir  Robert  Bowes,  Warden  of  the  Marches, 
who  seems  to  have  acted  as  head  of  the  family.  Sir 
Robert  turned  out  to  be  more  hostile  to  the  perilous 
alliance  proposed  for  his  niece  than  even  her  father ; 
and  Knox  wrote  that  'his  disdainful,  yea,  despiteful 
words  have  so  pierced  my  heart  that  my  life  is  bitter 
unto  me.'  When  Knox  was  about  to  have  'declared 
his  heart '  in  the  whole  matter,  Sir  Robert  interrupted 
him  with,  '  Away  with  your  rhetorical  reasons  !  for  I 
will  not  be  persuaded  with  them.'  Knox,  indignant, 
predicted  to  the  mother  of  his  betrothed  that  '  the  days 
should  be  few  that  England  should  give  me  bread,'  I  but 
adds  again,  '  Be  sure  I  will  not  forget  you  and  your 
company  so  long  as  mortal  man  may  remember  any 

*  '  Works,'  iii.  395.        t  '  Works,'  iii.  376.        X  *  Works,'  iii.  378. 


JOHN  KNOX  51 

earthly  creature.'*  He  escaped  from  England  very 
soon,  and  not  till  September  1555  did  he  return,  and 
that  on  Mrs  Bowes'  invitation ;  and  with  the  result  that 
he  brought  off  to  Geneva,  where  he  was  now  pastor  of  a 
distinguished  English  colony,  not  only  his  wife  Marjory, 
but  his  wife's  mother  too.  Here  his  two  sons,  Nathaniel 
and  Eleazar,  afterwards  students  at  Cambridge  and 
ministers  of  the  Church  of  England,  were  born.  But  in 
1559  wife  and  mother-in-law  accompanied  or  followed 
him  from  the  Continent  to  Edinburgh.  During  the 
anxious  and  critical  winter  which  followed,  Mrs  Knox 
seems  to  have  acted  as  her  husband's  amanuensis,  but 
*  the  rest  of  my  wife  hath  been  so  unrestful  since  her 
arriving  here,  that  scarcely  could  she  tell  upon  the 
morrow  what  she  wrote  at  night.'  f  Next  year  brought 
victory  and  peace,  but  too  late  for  her ;  for  in  December 
1560,  about  the  time  when  the  first  General  Assembly  was 
sitting  in  Edinburgh,  Knox's  wife  died.  We  learn  this 
from  the  *  History  of  the  Reformation,'  in  which  Knox 
records  a  meeting  of  that  date  between  himself  and  the 
two  foremost  nobles  of  Scotland,  Chatelherault  and 
Moray,  upon  public  affairs,  *  he  upon  the  one  part  com- 
forting them,  and  they  upon  the  other  part  comforting  him, 
for  he  was  in  no  small  heaviness  by  reason  of  the  late 
death  of  his  dear  bedfellow,  Marjorie  Bowes.'  |  And  of 
her  we  have  no  further  record,  except  Calvin's  epithet  of 
suavissima^%  and  her  husband's  repetition  years  after,  in 
his  Last  Will,  of  the  'benediction  that  their  dearest 
mother  left '  to  her  two  sons,  '  whereto,  now  as  then,  I 
from  my  troubled  heart  say.  Amen.'  || 

Four  years  passed,  and  Knox,  still  minister  of  Edin- 
burgh, and  now  in  his  fifty-ninth  year,  was  seen  riding 
home  with  a  second  wife,  *not  like  a  prophet  or  old 
decrepit  priest  as  he  was,'  said  his  Catholic  adversaries, 

*  '  Works,'  iii.  358.      f  *  Works,'  vi.  104.      %  '  Works,'  ii.  138. 
§  *  Calvini  Epistolae,'  Ep.  306.  H  '  Works,'  vi.  p.  Ivii. 


52  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

*but  with  his  bands  of  taffetie  fastened  with  golden 
rings.'  The  lady  for  whom  he  put  on  this  state  was 
Margaret  Stewart,  the  daughter  of  his  friend  Lord  Ochil- 
tree, and  the  same  critics  assure  us  that  '  by  sorcery  and 
witchcraft  he  did  so  allure  that  poor  gentlewoman,  that 
she  could  not  live  without  him.'  Queen  Mary  was 
angry  when  she  heard  of  it,  because  the  bride  *  was  of 
the  blood,'  i.e.  related  to  the  Royal  house;  and  even 
Knox's  friends  did  not  like  his  union  at  that  age  with  a 
girl  of  seventeen.  Young  Mrs  Knox  seems,  however, 
to  have  played  her  part  well,  especially  as  mother  of 
three  daughters ;  she  tended  their  father  carefully  in  his 
last  illness ;  and  no  one  will  regret  that  two  years  after 
his  death  she  made  a  more  suitable  marriage  as  to  years 
with  Andrew  Ker  of  Faudonside,  one  of  the  fierce  band 
whose  daggers  had  clashed  ten  years  before  in  the  body 
of  David  Rizzio. 

Knox's  liking  for  feminine  society,  and  his  suspicion 
that  he  had  more  qualifications  for  it  than  the  world 
has  believed,  come  out  sometimes  in  a  casual  way.  After 
one  of  his  famous  interviews  with  Queen  Mary,  he  was 
ordered  to  wait  her  pleasure  in  the  ante-room. 

'  The  said  John  stood  in  the  chamber,  as  one  whom  men  had 
never  seen  (so  were  all  afraid),  except  that  the  Lord  Ochiltree  bare 
him  company  ;  and  therefore  began  he  to  forge  talking  of  the  ladies 
who  were  there  sitting  in  all  their  gorgeous  apparel ;  which  espied, 
he  merrily  said,  "  O  fair  ladies,  how  pleasing  were  this  life  of  yours 
if  it  should  ever  abide,  and  then  in  the  end  that  we  might  pass  to 
heaven  with  all  this  gay  gear.  But  fye  upon  that  knave  Death, 
that  will  come  whether  we  will  or  not  !  And  when  he  has  laid  on 
his  arrest,  the  foul  worms  will  be  busy  with  this  flesh,  be  it  never  so 
fair  and  so  tender  ;  and  the  silly  soul,  I  fear,  shall  be  so  feeble,  that 
it  can  neither  carry  with  it  gold,  garnassing,  targetting,  pearl,  nor 
precious  stones."  And  by  such  means  procured  he  the  company  of 
•women.* 

These  moraUties,  however  merrily  intended  and  at 


JOHN  KNOX  53 

the  time  successful,  would  have  perhaps  been  more 
appropriate  in  the  Forest  of  Arden  or  the  graveyard  of 
Hamlet,  than  among  the  four  Maries  in  Holyrood  ;  and 
for  anything  that  is  to  be  of  autobiographical  value  we 
must  go  elsewhere  and  go  deeper.  His  wives  contribute 
nothing ;  we  may  hope  that  they  were  as  happy  as  the 
countries  which  have  no  history.  And  if  that  is  too  much 
to  believe — or  too  little  to  hope — we  shall  find  enough 
in  the  next  few  pages  to  satisfy  us  that  they  had  near 
them  in  all  their  trials  a  strong  and  tender  heart.  But 
of  their  inward  troubles,  and  of  the  sympathy  these 
may  have  drawn  forth,  Knox  is  not  the  historian — he 
refuses  to  be  the  historian  even  of  his  own  inner  life. 
He  unfolds  himself  in  writing  only  to  the  women  who 
are  in  trouble,  and  at  a  distance.  And  the  only  con- 
cession to  domesticity  is  in  the  fact  that  his  chief  corre- 
spondent is,  if  not  a  wife,  a  prospective  mother-in-law. 

The  letters  to  her  are  the  most  important  of  all, 
and  the  following  extract  is  from  one  published  among 
the  letters  of  1553  as  'The  First  to  Mrs  Bowes.'  It 
was  by  no  means  the  first,  even  in  that  year ;  but  it  is 
the  one  which  Knox  himself  long  afterwards  selected  as 
the  first  for  republication  and  as  best  illustrating  the 
original  relation  between  himself  and  the  lady  recently 
deceased.  In  it  he  had  said,  writing  from  London  to 
Norham : — 

•  Since  the  first  day  that  it  pleased  the  providence  of  God  to  bring 
you  and  rae  into  familiarity,  I  have  always  delighted  in  your  com- 
pany ;  and  when  labour  would  permit,  you  know  that  I  have  not 
spared  hours  to  talk  and  commune  with  you,  the  fruit  whereof  I  did  not 
then  fully  understand  nor  perceive.  But  now  absent,  and  so  absent 
that  by  corporal  presence  neither  of  us  can  receive  comfort  of  other, 
I  call  to  mind  how  that  ofttimes  when,  with  dolorous  hearts,  we 
have  begun  our  talking,  God  hath  sent  great  comfort  unto  both, 
which  for  my  own  part  I  commonly  want.  The  exposition  of  your 
troubles,  and  acknowledging  of  your  infirmity,  were  first  unto  me  a 
very  mirror  and  glass  wherein  I  beheld  myself  so  rightly  painted  forth 


54  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

that  nothing  could  be  more  evident  to  my  own  eyes.  And  then  the 
searching  of  the  Scriptures  for  God's  sweet  promises,  and  for  his 
mercies  freely  given  unto  miserable  offenders  -  (for  his  nature 
delighteth  to  shew  mercy  where  most  misery  reigneth) — the  col- 
lection and  applying  of  God's  mercies,  I  say,  were  unto  me  as  the 
breaking  and  handling  with  my  own  hands  of  the  most  sweet  and 
delectable  unguents,  whereof  I  could  not  but  receive  some  com- 
fort by  their  natural  sweet  odours.'  * 

The  sympathy  that  flows  through  this  beautiful 
passage  comes  out  very  strongly  in  another  written  in 
bodily  illness.  His  importunate  correspondent  had 
proposed  to  call  for  him  in  Newcastle  that  very  day. 
Knox  suggests  to-morrow  instead. 

*  This  day  ye  know  to  be  the  day  of  my  study  and  prayer  unto 
God  J  yet  if  your  trouble  be  intolerable,  or  if  ye  think  my  presence 
may  release  your  pain,  do  as  the  Spirit  shall  move  you,  for  you 
know  that  I  will  be  offended  with  nothing  that  you  do  in  God's 
name.  And  O,  how  glad  would  I  be  to  feed  the  hungry  and  give 
medicine  to  the  sick  1  Your  messenger  found  me  in  bed,  after  a 
sore  trouble  and  most  dolorous  night,  and  so  dolour  may  complain 
to  dolour  when  we  two  meet.'  f 

Another  letter,  also  to  Mrs  Bowes,  is  from  London, 
and  reveals  a  very  remarkable  scene.  He  acknowledges 
receiving  one  letter  from  Marjory,  and  one  from  her 
mother,  the  latter,  as  usual,  full  of  complaint. 

*  The  very  instant  hour  that  your  letter  was  presented  unto  me,  was 
I  talking  of  you,  by  reason  that  three  honest  poor  women  were  come 
to  me,  and  were  complaining  their  great  infirmity,  and  were  showing 
unto  me  the  great  assaults  of  the  enemy,  and  I  was  opening  the 
cause  and  commodities  thereof,  whereby  all  our  eyes  wept  at  once ; 
and  I  was  praying  unto  God  that  ye  and  some  others  had  been 
there  with  me  for  the  space  of  two  hours.  And  even  at  that  instant 
came  your  letters  to  my  hands ;  whereoi  one  part  I  read  unto 
them,  and  one  of  them  said,  '*  O  would  to  God  I  might  speak  with 
that  person,  for  I  perceive  that  there  be  more  tempted  than  !.'"$ 

*  *  Works,' iii.  337.  f  'Works,' iii.  352. 

J  *  Works, '  iii.  379.  Compare,  or  contrast,  this  scene  of  the 
three    poor    women  with    another    recorded    by  a    still   greater 


JOHN  KNOX  55 

The  persuasive  ingenuity  which  would  suggest  to  the 
Lady  of  Norham  that  she  was  a  source  not  only  of  com- 
fort but  of  strength  to  those  troubled  like  herself,  turns 
out  much  to  our  advantage.  For  Knox  puts  himself^ 
first  of  all,  in  the  place  of  those  whom  he  would  either 
advise  or  console.  And  in  the  earliest  dated  letter  of 
his  which  we  possess  there  is  a  vivid  picture  of  what 
took  place  between  two  people  who  were  much  in 
earnest,  three  and  a  half  centuries  ago,  about  this  life 
and  the  next.  Knox  has  written  fully  to  Mrs  Bowes, 
and  adds — 

'After  the  writing  ot  these  preceding,  your  brother  and  mine, 
Harry  Wycliffe,  did  advertise  me  by  writing  that  your  adversary  took 
occasion  to  trouble  you,  because  that  /  did  start  back  from  you  re- 
hearsing your  infirmities.  I  remember  myself  to  have  so  done,  and 
that  is  my  common  consuetude  when  anything  pierceth  or  toucheth 
my  heart.  Call  to  your  mind  what  I  did  standing  at  the  cupboard 
at  Alnwick  :  in  very  deed  I  thought  that  no  creature  had  been 
tempted  as  I  was.  And  when  that  I  heard  proceed  from  your 
mouth  the  very  words  that  he  troubles  me  with,  I  did  wonder  and 
from  my  heart  lament  your  sore  trouble,  knowing  in  myself  the 
dolour  thereof.'* 

What  was  the  temptation  which  Knox  thought  no 
creature  shared  with  him,  but  which  he  found,  as  he 

master  of  English.     The  tinker  had  gone  on  business  one  day  to 
Bedford : 

*  In  one  of  the  streets  of  that  town,  I  came  where  there  were 
three  or  four  poor  women  sitting  at  a  door  in  the  sun,  and  talking 
about  the  things  of  God.  .  .  .  But  they  were  far  above,  out  of  my 
reach  ;  for  their  talk  was  about  a  new  birth,  the  work  of  God  on 
their  hearts,  also  how  they  were  convinced  of  their  miserable 
state.  .  .  .  And  methought  they  spake  as  if  joy  did  make  them 
speak ;  they  spake  with  such  pleasantness  of  Scripture  language, 
and  with  such  appearance  of  grace  in  all  they  said,  that  they  were 
to  me  as  if  they  had  found  a  new  world,  as  if  they  were  people  that 
dwelt  alone,  and  were  not  to  be  reckoned  among  their  neighbours.  * 
— Bunyan's  Grace  Abounding. 

*  'Works,'  iii.  350. 


56  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

stood  at  the  cupboard  at  Alnwick,  had  come  to  Mrs 
Bowes  in  the  same  form,  and  even  in  the  same  words  ? 
As  it  happens,  we  can  answer  with  great  certainty.  It 
was  a  temptation  to  infidelity  or  '  incredulity ' :  the 
adversary  *  would  cause  you  abhor  that,  and  hate  it, 
wherein  stands  only  salvation  and  life,'  viz.,  the  name, 
as  well  as  the  whole  message,  of  Jesus  Christ.  So  it  is 
put  in  this  letter;  and  in  others,  apparently  later,  we 
read — 

*  That  ye  are  of  that  foolish  sort  of  men  that  say  in  their  heart, 
"  There  is  no  God,"  I  wonder  that  the  Devil  shames  not  to  allege 
that  contrary  [to]  you ;  but  he  is  a  liar,  and  father  of  the  same. 
For  if  in  your  heart  ye  said  there  is  no  God,  why  then  should  ye 
suffer  anguish  and  care  by  reason  that  the  enemy  troubles  you  with 
that  thought  ?  Who  can  be  afraid,  day  and  night,  for  that  which 
is  not  ? '  * 

Again — 

'  He  would  persuade  you  that  God's  Word  is  of  no  effect,  but 
that  it  is  a  vain  tale  invented  by  man,  and  so  all  that  is  spoken  of 
Jesus,  the  Son  of  God,  is  but  a  vain  fable.  ...  He  says  the  Scrip- 
tures of  God  are  but  a  tale,  and  no  credit  is  to  be  given  to  them.f 
.  .  .  Before  he  troubled  you  that  there  is  not  a  Saviour,  and  now  he 
affirms  that  ye  shall  be  like  to  Francis  Spira,  who  denied  Christ's 
doctrine. '  J 

In  that  age,  which  broke  through  the  crust  of  mere 
authority  to  seek  some  '  foundation  of  belief,'  there 
must  have  been  many  of  both  sexes  in  this  state  of 
mind ;  though  each  doubter  might  think  that  '  no 
creature '  shared  it.  The  nev>^  doctrine  of  individual 
faith  and  individual  responsibility  was  one  for  women 
as  well  as  men,  and  they  had  a  special  claim  on  the 
sympathy  of  their  teachers  when  central  doubts 
attacked  them.  Whether  these  doubts  in  the  case  of 
Mrs  Bowes,  or  in  that  of  Knox^  arose  in  the  line  of  any 
particular  enquiries  does  not  appear.    He  treats  them  as 

*  *  Works,'  iii.  360.      f  '  Works,'  iii.  366.      %  '  Works,'  iii.  368. 


JOHN  KNOX  57 

if  they  were  rather  moral  than  intellectual,  and  born  of 
the  feebleness  of  the  soul  under  temptation.  And  in 
this  relation  it  says  not  a  little  for  his  estimate  of  Mrs 
Bowes,  whom  he  was  leaving  behind  under  the  Marian 
persecution,  and  with  her  husband  and  most  of  her 
family  hostile  to  her,  that,  instead  of  attenuating,  he 
rather  magnifies  the  external  difficulties  she  had  to 
meet. 

*  Your  adversary,  sister,  doth  labour  that  ye  should  doubt  whether 
this  be  the  Word  of  God  or  not.  If  there  had  never  been  testi- 
monial of  the  undoubted  truth  thereof  before  these  our  ages,  may 
not  such  things  as  we  see  daily  come  to  pass  prove  the  verity  there- 
of? Doth  it  not  affirm  that  it  shall  be  preached,  and  yet  contemned 
and  lightly  regarded  by  many ;  that  the  true  professors  thereof  shall 
be  hated  with  [by]  father,  mother,  and  others  of  the  contrary  re- 
ligion J  that  the  most  faithful  shall  cruelly  be  persecuted  ?  And 
come  not  all  these  things  to  pass  in  ourselves  ? '  * 

But  sceptical  or  speculative  doubts  were  not  Mrs 
Bowes'  chief  trouble.  She  writes  Knox  complaining 
of  her  temptations — even  temptations  of  sense.  And 
chiefly  and  continually  she  complained  of  past  guilt  and 
present  sin,  by  reason  of  which  she  felt  as  if  '  remission 
of  sins  in  Christ  Jesus  pertained  nothing  to  her.'  f  This 
was  not  a  case  for  the  'sweet,  pleasant,  and  unspeakable 
comfort'  which  the  Church  of  England  ascribes  to  the 
doctrine    of   Predestination    rightly   used.      Nor   does 

*  '  Works,'  iii.  357.  Browning  makes  his  good  old  Pope  feel,  in 
the  later  Renaissance,  as  if  Christian  heroism  had  been 

'  so  possible 
When  in  the  way  stood  Nero's  cross  and  stake, 
So  hard  now ' — 

and,  looking  back  almost  regretfully  to  Nero's  time,  to  ask — 

*  How  could  saints  and  martyrs _/izz7  see  truth 
Streak  the  night's  blackness  ?  * 

•  The  Ring  and  the  Book.     The  Pope,'  line  1827. 
t  '  Works,'  vi.  514. 


58  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Knox  deal  with  it  —  at  least  in  his  letters  —  by  the 
simple  and  peremptory  preaching  of  the  Evangel.  He 
recognised  it  as  a  case  calling  for  sympathy,  and  he  does 
not  find  the  sympathy  hard.  Knox,  indeed,  like  the 
other  Reformers,  had  parted  for  ever  with  the  mediaeval 
idea  of  salvation  by  self-torture — even  by  self-torture  for 
sin.  Like  all  the  wisest  of  the  human  race,  too — even 
before  Christianity  came  to  sanction  their  surmise — he 
held  that  religion  must  be  an  objective  thing,  and  that 
salvation  lies  in  dealing,  not  with  ourselves,  but  with 
One  outside  of  us  and  above.  Yet  it  is  a  salvation  from 
sin,  and  the  new  life  now  springing  up  throughout 
Europe  was  intensely  a  moral  life.  The  faith,  too,  on 
which  the  age  laid  so  much  stress  as  a  '  coming '  to 
God,  involved  repentance  as  a  *  turning  '  to  God.  And 
while  repentance  no  longer  meant  penance,  whether  of 
body  or  mind,  it  meant — and  as  Knox  puts  it  repeatedly 
— *  it  contains  within  itself  a  dolour  for  sin,  a  hatred  of 
sin,  and  yet  hope  of  mercy ' ;  and  it  is  renewed  as  often 
as  the  occasion  arises  for  renewed  deliverance  from  the 
evil.  Accordingly,  Knox  now  acts  on  the  principle 
which  he  announced  years  afterwards  in  a  letter  to 
another  friend,*  and  again  and  again  tears  open  his 
own  heart  to  comfort  others  by  shewing  that  he,  with 
hope  or  assurance  in  Christ,  still  felt  the  burden  and 
assault  of  sin. 

*  I  can  write  to  you  by  my  own  experience.  I  have  sometimes 
been  in  that  security  that  I  felt  not  dolour  for  sin,  neither  yet  dis- 
pleasure against  myself  for  any  iniquity  in  that  I  did  offend.  But 
rather  my  vain  heart  did  thus  flatter  myself,  (I  write  the  truth  to  my 
own  confusion,  and  to  the  glory  of  my  heavenly  Father,  through 
Jesus  Christ),  'Thou  hast  suffered  great  trouble  for  professing  of 
Christ's  truth ;  God  has  done  great  things  for  thee.' .  .  .  O  Mother  ! 

*  '  The  examples  of  God's  children  always  complaining  of  their 
own  wretchedness  serve  for  the  penitent  that  they  slide  not  into 
desperation.' — *  Works,'  vi.  85. 


JOHN  KNOX  59 

this  was  a  subtle  serpent  who  thus  could  pour  in  venom,  I  not  per- 
ceiving it ;  but  blessed  be  my  God  who  permitted  me  not  to  sleep 
long  in  that  estate.  I  drank,  shortly  after  this  flattery  of  myself,  a 
cup  of  contra-poison,  the  bitterness  whereof  doth  yet  so  remain  in 
my  breast,  that  whatever  I  have  suffered,  or  presently  do,  I  repute 
as  dung,  yea,  and  myself  worthy  of  damnation  for  my  ingratitude 
towards  my  God,  The  like  Mother,  might  have  come  to  you,' 
&c.* 

Mrs  Bowes  lived  in  her  famous  son-in-law's  house  till 
close  upon  her  death.  By  that  time  he  had  come  to 
recognise  that  her  experience  was  an  exceptional  t  and, 
perhaps,  a  morbid  one;  and  at  a  very  early  date  he 
manifestly  felt  the  pressure  of  her  constant  applications 
to  him  for  help.  Yet  throughout  the  correspondence 
his  unfailing  attitude  to  her  is  that  of  admirably  tender 
solicitude;  and  when  he  has  to  go  into  exile  in  the 
beginning  of  1554  he  first  sits  down  and  writes — still 
partly  in  the  form  of  letters  to  her — a  treatise  on  Afflic- 
tion. It  is  of  great  and  permanent  value,  the  subject 
not  being  one  which  our  race  can  as  yet  claim  to  have 
outgrown  :  but  I  shall  make  no  reference  to  its  contents. 
Even  in  his  previous  and  ordinary  letters,  however, 
Knox  had  reached  the  conclusion  that  her  case  was  one 
of  inward  Affliction,  rather  than,  as  she  would  have  it, 
of  sin.  And  the  treatment  of  this  great  subject  of 
*  desertion,'  by  one  who  was  a  standard-bearer  of  the 
new  doctrine  of  faith  and  assurance,  is  remarkably 
beautiful.  *It  is  dolorous  to  the  faithful,'  he  writes 
another  friend,  *to  lack  the  sensible  feeling  of  God's 
mercy  and  goodness  (and  the  sensible  feeling  thereof  he 
lacketh  what  time  he  fully  cannot  rest  and  repose  upon 
the  same).  And  yet  as  nothing  more  commonly  cometh 
to  God's  children,  so  is  there  no  exercise  more  profitable 
for  his  soldiers  than  is  the  same.'  But  to  Mrs  Bowes  he 
points  out,  what  she  certainly  would  not  have  observed, 

*  'Works,'  iii.  386.  t  'Works,  vi.  513. 


6o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

that  *it  doth  no  more  offend  God's  Majesty  that  the 
spirit  sometimes  lie  as  it  were  asleep,  neither  having 
sense  of  great  dolour  nor  great  comfort,  more  than  it 
doth  offend  him  that  the  body  use  the  natural  rest, 
ceasing  from  all  external  exercise.'  And  again,  varying 
the  figure,  '  no  more  is  God  displeased,  although  that 
sometimes  the  body  be  sick,  and  subject  to  diseases, 
and  so  unable  to  do  the  calling ;  no  more  is  he  offended, 
although  the  soul  in  that  case  be  diseased  and  sick. 
And  as  the  natural  father  will  not  kill  the  body  of  the 
child,  albeit  through  sickness  it  faint,  and  abhor  com- 
fortable meats,  no  more  (and  much  less)  will  our 
heavenly  Father  kill  our  souls,  albeit,  through  spiritual 
infirmity  and  weakness  of  our  faith,  sometimes  we  refuse 
the  lively  food  of  his  comfortable  promises.'*  .  .  . 
'  You  are  sick,  dear  sister,'  he  had  said  elsewhere,  '  and 
therefore,'  alluding  even  to  her  confidences  of  scepticism 
as  to  Christian  doctrine,  *  you  abhor  the  succour  of  most 
wholesome  food.'  *Fear  not,'  he  sums  up  in  a  sub- 
sequent letter,  *the  infirmity  that  you  find  either  in 
flesh  or  spirit.  Only  abstain  from  external  iniquity ' — 
which  he  supplements  elsewhere  with  the  more  positive 
advice,  'Be  fervent  in  reading,  fervent  in  prayer,  and 
merciful  to  the  poor,  according  to  your  power,  and  God 
shall  put  an  end  to  all  dolours,  when  least  is  thought 
[according]  to  the  judgment  of  man.'  And  in  the 
meantime,  '  Dear  mother,  he  that  is  sorry  for  absence 
of  virtue  is  not  altogether  destitute  of  the  same  .  .  . 
our  hunger  cries  unto  God.'  Knox  himself,  he  assured 
his  troubled  friend,  never  ceased  to  pray  for  her;  but 
'although  I  would  cease,  and  yourself  would  cease,  and 

*  It  is  of  the  letter  from  which  the  above  is  taken  that  Knox 
in  publishing  it  long  after  says  apologetically,  '  If  it  serve  not  for 
this  estate  of  Scotland,  yet  it  will  serve  a  troubled  conscience,  so 
long  as  the  Kirk  of  God  remaineth  in  either  realm.' — 'Works,' 
vi.  617. 


JOHN  KNOX  6 1 

all  other  creature,  yet  your  dolour  continually  cryeth 
and  returneth  not  void  from  the  presence  of  our 
God/* 

Mrs  Bowes  was  not  the  only  'mirror  and  glass'  in 
whom  Knox  allows  us  to  see  his  inner  self  'painted/ 
though  the  woman-hearted  warrior  is  limned  in  the 
letters  to  her  more  nearly  at  full  length.  Two  ladies  in 
Edinburgh,  one  the  wife  of  the  Lord  Clerk  Register, 
and  the  other  of  the  City  Clerk,  were  his  friends  and 
correspondents,  at  a  later  date,  but  while  he  was  still  in 
exile.  And  in  a  letter  '  to  his  sisters '  in  that  town,  he 
unbosoms  himself  as  usual  as  to  the  principles  of  his 
inner  life,  but  adds — 

*  Alas  !  as  the  wounded  man,  be  he  never  so  expert  in  physic  or 
surgery,  cannot  suddenly  mitigate  his  own  pain  and  dolour,  no 
more  can  I  the  fear  and  grief  of  my  heart,  although  I  am  not  alto- 
gether ignorant  what  is  to  be  done.'f 

The  same  sentiment  is  expanded  in  one  of  a  number 
of  letters  sent  to  a  group  of  '  merchants'  wives  in 
London,'  which  probably  included  the  'three  honest 
poor  women '  I  of  whom  we  have  already  heard.  Of 
this  group  the  most  remarkable  was  Mrs  Anna  Locke, 
of  the  family  which  afterwards  yielded  the  famous  John 
Locke.  She,  like  Mrs  Bowes,  followed  Knox  to  Geneva 
amid  the  stream  of  exiles  from  London ;  and  his  letters 
to  her  give  the  impression  that  she  was  not  only  wealthy 
and  energetic,  but  possessed  of  higher  character  and 
more  accomplishments  than  the  well-born  Elizabeth 
Bowes.  The  letters  to  the  latter  were  written  chiefly  in 
1553.      The  following,  to   Mrs    Locke,    is   sent   from 

*  '  Works,' iii.  362.  t  '  Works,' iv.  252. 

X  '  Honest '  in  that  age  meant  something  nearly  equivalent 
to  'honourable,'  and  that  they  were  'poor  women'  may  refer 
to  troubles  which  they  brought  to  him,  other  than  want  of 
money. 


62  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Scotland  after  Knox's  return  there,  and  is  dated  on  the 
last  day  of  1559  : — 

*  God  make  yourself  participant  oi  the  same  comfort  which  you 
write  unto  me.  And  in  very  deed,  dear  sister,  I  have  no  less  need 
of  comfort  (notwithstanding  that  I  am  not  altogether  ignorant)  than 
hath  the  living  man  to  be  fed,  although  in  store  he  hath  great  sub- 
stance. I  have  read  the  cares  and  temptations  of  Moses,  and  some- 
times I  supposed  myself  to  be  well  practised  in  such  dangerous 
battles.  But,  alas  !  I  now  perceive  that  all  my  practice  before  was 
but  mere  speculation  ;  for  one  day  of  troubles  since  my  last  arrival 
in  Scotland,  hath  more  pierced  my  heart  than  all  the  torments  of 
the  galleys  did  the  space  of  nineteen  months  ;  for  that  torment,  for 
the  most  part,  did  touch  the  body,  but  this  pierces  the  soul  and 
inward  affections.  Then  I  was  assuredly  persuaded  that  I  should 
not  die  till  I  had  preached  Jesus  Christ,  even  where  I  now  am. 
And  yet  having  now  my  hearty  desire,  I  am  nothing  satisfied,  neither 
yet  rejoice.     My  God,  remove  my  unthankfulness  ! '  * 

Men  of  this  expansive  and  confiding  temperament 
are  attractive,  and  will  occasionally  get  into  trouble, 
even  in  later  life.  We  find  Mrs  Bowes  ere  long  com- 
plaining that  she  '  had  not  been  equally  made  privy  to 
Knox's  coming  into  the  country  with  others,'  and  need- 
ing to  be  assured  that  *  none  is  this  day  within  the 
realm  of  England,  with  whom  I  would  more  gladly 
speak  (only  she  whom  God  hath  offered  unto  me,  and 
commanded  me  to  love  as  my  own  flesh,  excepted)  than 
with  you.'  t  Mrs  Locke,  later  on,  points  out  that  she 
has  not  had  a  letter  for  a  whole  year.  And  this  elicits 
not  only  the  assurance  that  it  is  not  the  absence  of  one 
year  or  two  *  that  can  quench  in  my  heart  that  familiar 
acquaintance  in  Christ  Jesus,  which  half  a  year  did 
engender,  and  almost  two  years  did  nourish  and  confirm,' 
but  also  the  following  striking  general  statement,  which, 
like  many  things  from  Knox,  impresses  us  by  a  certain 
straightforward  and  noble  egotism  : 

*  *  Works,'  vi.  104.  t  *  Works,'  iii.  370, 


JOHN  KNOX  63 

'Of  nature  I  am  churlish,  and  in  conditions*  different  from 
many  :  yet  one  thing  I  ashame  not  to  affirm,  that  familiarity  once 
thoroughly  contracted  was  never  yet  broken  on  my  default.  The 
cause  may  be  that  I  have  rather  need  of  all,  than  that  any  have  need 
of  me.'t 

It  may  be  true  that  Knox  never  broke  a  friendship 
with  either  sex.  But  his  friendships  with  men  were 
mascuhne  and  very  reserved  in  tone  j  and  we  may  be 
quite  sure  that  the  memorable  concluding  sentence  of 
the  above  paragraph  would  never  have  been  written 
except  to  a  woman.  Most  people  will  be  delighted  to 
see  already  fallen  under  the  *  regimen  of  women '  the 
very  man  who  was  to  set  the  trumpet  to  his  lips  against 
it.  But  those  who  study  Knox's  life  are  indebted  to 
his  familiar  correspondence,  and  especially  to  the  earlier 
part  of  it,  for  far  more  than  the  gratification  of  this  not 
unkindly  malice.  For  these  letters,  I  think,  prove  to 
all — what  the  finer  ear  might  have  gathered  with 
certainty  from  many  things  even  in  his  public  writings 
— that  the  main  source  of  that  outward  and  active  career 
was  an  inner  life. 

We  must  part  for  ever  with  the  idea  of  Knox  as  a 
human  cannon-ball,  endowed  simply  with  force  of  will,  and 
tearing  and  shattering  as  it  goes.  The  views  which  at  a 
definite  period  gave  this  tremendous  impulse  to  a  nature 
previously  passive,  are  not  obscure,  and  are  perfectly 

*  '  Conditions '  refers  to  inward  nature,  not  outward  circum- 
stances. It  may  be  explained  by  a  letter  written  nine  years  later, 
also  to  a  friend  in  England,  in  which  Knox  apologises  for  not  having 
written  him  for  years,  during  which  the  Reformer  had  been  '  tossed 
with  many  storms,'  yet  might  have  sent  a  letter,  'if  that  this  my 
churlish  nature,  for  the  most  part  oppressed  with  melancholy,  had 
not  staid  tongue  and  pen  from  doing  of  their  duty.' — '  Works,'  vi. 
566.  Knox  in  1553  was  suffering  severely  from  gravel  and  dyspepsia  ; 
one  of  these  was  already  an  *  old  malady  '  j  and  both  seem  to  have 
clung  to  him  during  the  rest  of  his  lire. 

t  'Works,'  vi.  II, 


64  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

traceable.  They  are  views  upon  which  Knox  continu- 
ally insists  as  common  to  himself  with  all  Christian  men, 
and  which  were  common  to  him  with  the  mass  of  Christian 
men — and  women — who  were  the  strength  of  that  time 
and  the  hope  of  the  age  to  follow.  They  were  views 
which,  when  received  with  full  conviction  by  any 
individual,  led  outwardly  to  suffering  on  the  one 
hand,  or,  on  the  other,  to  shattering  the  whole  com- 
pacted system  of  opposing  intolerance.  But  they  were 
views  which,  when  thus  translated  into  convictions,  not 
only  pressed  outward  with  explosive  force,  but  also,  and 
necessarily,  spread  inwards  in  reflux  and  expansion  to 
refresh  and  animate  the  man.  They  might  have  done  so 
— in  the  case  of  some  men  of  that  time  they  did — without 
overflowing  into  the  private  life  and  into  sympathetic 
converse  and  confidence  with  others.  But  Knox  was 
so  constituted  as  to  need  this  also  and  to  supply  it.  And 
the  fragments  of  his  correspondence  which  are  all  that 
remain  to  us,  and  which  probably  were  all  that  an  extra- 
ordinarily busy  public  work  permitted,  are  conclusive  on 
some  things  and  instructive  on  others.  They  are  con- 
clusive as  to  the  existence,  under  that  breastplate  of 
hammered  iron  with  which  Knox  confronted  all  outward 
opposition,  of  a  private  and  personal  life — a  life  inward, 
secret,  and  deep,  and  a  life  also  rich,  tender,  and  emi- 
nently sympathetic.  They  are  conclusive  also,  I  think, 
of  this  inner  life  being  the  source  and  spring  of  the 
life  without,  instead  of  being  merely  derived  from  it. 
And  they  will  thus  be  found  instructive  as  to  the  in- 
fluence of  that  hidden  life,  in  its  strength  and  its  limita- 
tions alike,  on  the  external  career  which  we  have  now 
to  trace. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    PUBLIC    life:    TO    THE    PARLIAMENT    OF    I560 

Knox  had  preached  only  for  a  few  months  in  St  Andrews 
in  1547,  when  the  castle  capitulated  to  the  foreign  fleet, 
and  he  and  his  companions  were  flung  into  the  French 
galleys.  There  for  nineteen  months  he  toiled  at  the  oar 
under  the  lash,  and  through  the  cold  of  two  winters,  and 
the  heat  of  the  intervening  summer,  had  leisure  to  count 
the  cost  of  the  choice  so  recently  made.  It  is  a  tribute 
to  his  constancy  that  men  chiefly  remember  this  dark 
time  by  its  spots  of  colour — as  when,  at  Nantes,  he  flung 
Our  Lady's  image  into  the  Loire — '  She  is  light  enough : 
let  her  learn  to  swim  ! '  And  when  off"  St  Andrews  they 
pointed  out  to  him  the  steeple  of  the  kirk,  the  emaciated 
prisoner  replied,  '  Yes,  I  know  it  well :  and  I  am  fully 
persuaded,  how  weak  that  ever  I  now  appear,  that  I  shall 
not  depart  this  life  till  that  my  tongue  shall  glorify  His 
godly  name  in  the  same  place.'  But  this  first  appren- 
ticeship to  sorrow  went  deep  into  the  man.  It  was  when 
he  was  '  in  Rouen,  lying  in  irons,  and  sore  troubled  by 
corporal  infirmity,  in  a  galley  named  Notre  Dame^^  that 
he  sent  a  letter  to  his  St  Andrews  friends.  And  in  it  he 
asks  them  to  '  Consider ' — his  countrymen  have  scarcely 
as  yet  considered  it  sufficiently — '  Consider,  brethren,  it 
is  no  speculative  theologue  which  desireth  to  give  you 
courage,  but  even  your  brother  in  affliction,  which  partly 
hath  experience  what  Satan's  wrath  may  do  against  the 
chosen  of  God.'*     His  spirit  indeed  was  in  no  wise 

*  *  Works,'  iii.  10. 
4  E  ^5 


66  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

broken  :  on  his  escape  from  France  he  became  again  a 
garrison  preacher,  and  gained  over  King  Edward's  rude 
soldiers  in  Berwick  an  ascendancy,  even  greater  than  he 
had  held  in  St  Andrews  over  the  young  lairds  of  Fife. 
But,  though  not  broken,  it  was  chastened.  It  was  during 
the  following  years,  and  especially  in  1553,  that  he  wrote 
the  deeply  sympathetic  letters  from  which  we  have  already 
quoted.  And  in  1554,  when  he  left  England  to  escape 
Mary  Tudor,  he  introduces  into  a  short  but  admirable 
treatise  on  Prayer  some  autobiographical  references,  which 
seem  to  date  back  to  the  extreme  suffering  of  his  captivity, 
*  when  not  only  the  ungodly,  but  even  my  faithful  brethren, 
yea,  and  my  own  self,  that  is,  all  natural  understanding, 
judged  my  cause  (case)  to  be  irremediable.' 

*  The  frail  flesh,  oppressed  with  fear  and  pain,  desireth  deliver- 
ance, ever  abhorring  and  drawing  back  from  obedience  giving.  O 
Christian  brethren,  I  write  by  experience  ...  I  know  the  grudg- 
ing and  murmuring  complaints  of  the  flesh ;  I  know  the  anger, 
w^rath,  and  indignation  which  it  conceiveth  against  God,  calling  all 
his  promises  in  doubt,  and  being  ready  every  hour  utterly  to  fall 
from  God.     Against  which  rests  [remains]  only  faith.' 

Knox's  faith  sprang  readily  to  whatever  active  duty 
was  set  before  it.  On  his  escape  from  France  he  spent, 
as  we  have  seen,  five  years  in  England,  and  at  the  close 
of  that  period  we  have  his  own  assurance  that  he  had 
become  almost  an  Englishman. 

'  Sometime  I  have  thought  that  impossible  it  had  been,  so  to 
have  removed  my  affection  from  the  realm  of  Scotland,  that  any 
realm  or  nation  could  have  been  equally  dear  to  me.  But  God  I 
take  to  record  in  my  conscience  that  the  troubles  present  (and 
appearing  to  be)  in  the  realm  of  England  are  doubly  more  dolorous 
unto  my  heart  than  ever  were  the  troubles  of  Scotland.'* 

He  had  laboured  incessantly  in  many  parts  of  Eng- 
land, first  as  licensed  preacher  and  then  as  King's  chap- 
lain, and  this  of  course  brought  him  in  contact  with 

*  *  Works, 'iii.  133. 


JOHN  KNOX  67 

church  politics  as  well  as  the  Evangel.  It  was  owing  to 
Knox's  remonstrances  that,  when  King  Edward's  Council 
put  kneeling  at  the  Sacrament  into  the  Pray er-B 00k, 
they  accompanied  it  with  the  Rubric,  which  is  still  re- 
tained, and  which  testifies  *  that  thereby  no  adoration  is 
intended  or  ought  to  be  done.'  So  far  his  position  was 
reasonable,  and  even  conciliatory.  But  as  early  as  1550, 
when  requested,  perhaps  by  the  Council  of  the  North, 
to  'give  his  confession'  in  Newcastle  as  to  the  Mass, 
he  repeated  the  Puritan  view  of  his  first  St  Andrews 
sermon,  but  now  in  his  favourite  form  of  a  syllogism, 
and  with  its  major  clause  dangerously  enlarged. 

*  All  worshipping,  honouring,  or  service  invented  by  the  brain  of 
man  in  the  religion  of  God,  without  his  own  express  commandment, 
is  Idolatry*  The  Mass  is  invented  by  the  brain  of  man  without  any 
commandment  of  God,  therefore  it  is  idolatry.' 

To  Knox's  five  years  in  England  now  succeeded  five 
years  which  may  be  said  to  have  been  spent  on  the 
Continent.  He  first  drifted  to  Frankfort,  and  was  put 
in  charge  of  the  English  congregation  there.  Very  soon 
the  two  parties,  which  have  ever  since  divided  the 
Church  of  England,  made  their  appearance  in  this 
representative  fragment  of  it.  Knox,  of  course,  took 
the  Puritan  side  as  to  the  form  of  worship ;  but  a  large 
part  of  his  congregation  insisted  on  the  full  service  of 
King  Edward's  book.  The  matter  was  brought  to  a 
close  in  rather  an  unfortunate  way  by  two  of  Knox's 
opponents  lodging  an  accusation  against  him  before  the 
Magistrates,  of  treason  against  the  Emperor,  the  English 
Queen,  and  her  Spanish  husband.  Frankfort  was  an  im- 
perial city,  and  Knox  was  thus  no  longer  safe  there.  He 
went  to  Geneva,  which  was  then,  under  Calvin's  influence, 

*  *  Works,*  iii.  34.  The  rashness  of  the  general  proposition  here 
can  only  be  appreciated  when  we  remember  Knox's  view  that  it 
was  the  duty  of  the  Magistrate  not  only  to  suppress  idolatry,  but  to 
punish  it  with  death. 


68  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

an  illustrious  centre  of  the  reformed  faith ;  and  was  at 
once  called  to  be  co-pastor  there  (along  with  Goodman) 
of  the  English-speaking  congregation.  Knox's  later 
biographer  points  out  the  historic  importance  of  this 
'  the  first  Puritan  congregation.'  It  was  the  source  of 
Elizabethan  Non-conformity,  and  'it  is  in  the  writings 
of  Knox  and  Goodman  that  those  doctrines  were  first 
unflinchingly  expounded  which  eventually  became  the 
tradition  of  Puritanism.'*  The  Church  Order,  too, 
which  they  adopted  became  afterwards  that  of  worship 
in  Scotland ;  their  Psalms  were  the  model  for  the  Eng- 
lish and  Scotch  versions ;  and,  above  all,  the  Genevan 
Bible,  prepared  by  the  members  of  Knox's  congregation 
at  the  very  time  he  was  their  minister,  continued  for 
three-quarters  of  a  century  thereafter  to  be  *  the  house- 
hold book  of  the  English-speaking  nations.'  It  is  called 
the  happiest  and  most  peaceful  time  of  Knox's  life. 
But  it  was  a  time  of  incessant  preparation  for  still  greater 
things,  and  in  this  short  biography  we  must  confine  our- 
selves to  what  bears  either  on  the  man  himself  or  on  his 
supreme  work  for  his  native  country. 

For  during  all  Knox's  life  on  the  Continent  he  seems 
to  have  kept  in  view  the  problem  of  how  the  Evangel 
could  be  set  free  in  Scotland.  He  never  had  any 
doubt  as  to  the  duty  of  the  individual  to  confess  it  in 
the  teeth  of  the  Magistrate  and  of  the  law.  But  how 
could  men  combine  together  to  do  so,  against  authority 
otherwise  lawful  ?  On  this  and  similar  points  he  pro- 
posed questions  on  his  first  arrival  in  Switzerland  to  the 
leading  theologians.  Bullinger,  with  the  approval  of 
Calvin,  gave  an  answer  which  may  have  suggested  to 
Knox  the  idea  that  a  people  (the  Armenians  are  speci- 
ally instanced)  may  revolt  against  *  their  legitimate 
magistrate '   who   persecutes  the  truth,   provided  they 

*  Hume  Brown,  i.  203. 


JOHN  KNOX  69 

have  an  inferior  magistrate  to  lead  them.*  And  next  year, 
1555,  Knox  made  a  memorable  visit  to  Scotland.  There 
James  the  Fifth's  widow,  Mary  of  Lorraine,  was  now 
Regent,  and  so  chief  *  Magistrate.'  She  was  during  all 
those  years  not  disposed  to  be  intolerant,  and  the  prospect 
was  everywhere  encouraging.  From  Edinburgh  Knox 
writes  to  Mrs  Bowes  (still  in  Northumberland),  thanking 
her  for  being 

*  the  instrument  to  draw  me  from  the  den  of  my  own  ease  (you 
alone  did  draw  me  from  the  rest  of  quiet  study)  to  contemplate  and 
behold  the  fervent  thirst  of  our  brethren,  night  and  day  sobbing 
and  groaning  for  the  bread  of  life.  If  I  had  not  seen  it  with  my  eyes 
in  my  own  country,  I  could  not  have  believed  it.  Depart  I  cannot, 
unto  such  time  as  God  quench  their  thirst  a  little.'  And  accordingly 
later  on  he  adds,  *  The  trumpet  blew  the  old  sound  three  days 
together,  till  private  houses  of  indifferent  largeness  could  not  contain 
the  voice  of  it.  God  for  Christ  his  Son's  sake  grant  me  to  be  mind- 
ful that  the  sobs  of  my  heart  have  not  been  in  vain,  nor  neglected 
in  the  presence  of  his  Majesty.  O  sweet  were  the  death  that 
should  follow  such  forty  days  in  Edinburgh  as  here  I  have  had 
three  !  'f 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  this  glowing  enthusiasm  that 
Knox  attended  an  Edinburgh  supper  party  in  the  house 
of  Erskine,  the  Laird  of  Dun,  where  the  question  was 
formally  discussed  whether  those  who  believed  the 
Evangel  could  countenance  by  their  presence  the  cele- 
bration of  the  Mass  ?  Knox  maintained  the  negative, 
and  as  young  Maitland  of  Lethington  and  other  acute 
doubters  were  there,  all  views  were  well  represented.  But 
in  the  end  the  Reformer's  zeal  prevailed,  and  another 
step  was  taken  to  making  Protestantism  a  public  if  not 
a  permitted  thing  in  Scotland.  From  Edinburgh  he 
took  journeys  to  Forfarshire,  to  West  Lothian,  to  Ayr- 
shire, and  to  Renfrewshire ;  and  after  half  a  year  spent 
in  incessant  preaching,  followed  occasionally  by  admin- 

*  'Works,'  iii.  224.  t  *  Works,'  iv.  217,  218. 


70  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

istering  the  Sacraments,  he  was  at  last  cited  to  appear 
before  the  bishops  in  the  Blackfriars  Church,  Edinburgh. 
He  went,  but  attended  by  so  many  friends  that  nothing 
was  attempted  against  him  for  the  time.  And  now,  at 
the  suggestion  of  Glencairn  and  Marischal,  two  of  the 
lords  who  were  favourable  to  the  new  doctrine,  Knox  sat 
down  to  write  a  letter  to  the  Queen  Dowager,  as  Regent  of 
Scotland.  It  had  hitherto  been  Mary  of  Lorraine's  policy 
to  play  off  the  Protestant  party,  which  had  leanings  to 
England,  against  the  Catholic  side,  which  was  faithful  to 
France.  Knox  accordingly  blesses  'God,  who  by  the  dew 
of  his  heavenly  grace,  hath  so  quenched  the  fire  of  dis- 
pleasure in  your  Grace's  heart,'  and  with  unprecedented 
courtesy  apologises  *  that  a  man  of  base  estate  and  con- 
dition dare  enterprise  to  admonish  a  Princess  so  honour- 
able, endued  with  wisdom  and  graces  singular.'  Those 
whom  Knox  represented  were  a  small  minority  of  Scotch- 
men ;  but  that  did  not  prevent  him  demanding  of  the 
Regent  far  more  than  mere  neutrality  or  *  indifferency ' 
between  the  contending  parties.  He  demands  of  her 
the  reform  of  both  religion  and  the  church.  He  admits 
that  *  your  Grace's  power  is  not  so  free  as  a  public  Re- 
formation perchance  would  require '  \  you  *  cannot  hastily 
abolish  superstition,  .  .  .  which  to  a  public  Reforma- 
tion is  requisite  and  necessary.  But  if  the  zeal  of  God's 
glory  be  fervent  in  your  Grace's  heart,  you  will  not  by 
wicked  laws  maintain  idolatry,  neither  will  you  suffer 
the  fury  of  Bishops  to  murder  and  devour.'  The  Queen 
Regent  was  not  disposed  to  go  very  far  with  the  bishops, 
but  still  less  was  she  fervent  for  God's  glory  and  public 
Reformation.  Accordingly,  on  the  first  Court  day  she 
handed  Knox's  letter,  perhaps  unread,  to  the  Bishop  of 
Glasgow,  with  the  words,  *  Please  you,  my  Lord,  to  read 
a  Pasquil.'  The  unwise  jest  came  to  Knox's  ears,  and 
some  years  after  he  published  his  letter  with  resentful 
additions  and  interpolations.     In  these  he  assumed — 


JOHN  KNOX  71 

much  too  soon — that  there  was  no  longer  hope  of  the 
Regent  becoming  personally  convinced  of  the  Evangel. 
But  he  at  the  same  time  modified  his  *  Petition '  on 
behalf  of  his  party  to  this,  *  that  our  doctrine  may  be 
tried  by  the  plain  word  of  God,  and  that  liberty  be 
granted  to  us  to  utter  and  declare  our  minds  at  large  in 
every  article  and  point  which  are  now  in  controversy ' ; 
and  on  his  own  behalf  and  '  in  the  name  of  the  Lord 
Jesus,  that  with  ifidifferency  I  may  be  heard  to  preach, 
to  reason,  and  to  dispute  in  that  cause.' 

But  now,  in  July  1556,  letters  came  to  Knox  in 
Edinburgh  from  his  congregation  in  Geneva,  '  com- 
manding him  in  God's  name,  as  he  was  their  chosen 
pastor,  to  repair  unto  them  for  their  comfort.'  He  at 
once  complied,  sending  before  him  from  Norham  to 
Dieppe  his  wife  and  her  mother.  Scotland  was  not  yet 
ripe.  The  lay  professors  of  the  Evangel  indeed  were 
not  seriously  molested  after  his  departure.  But  on  the 
other  hand  Knox  himself  was  at  once  cited  to  appear  in 
Edinburgh,  condemned  in  absence  as  a  contumacious 
heretic,  and  burned  at  the  Cross  in  the  High  Street — 
in  efifigy.  Neither  this,  nor  his  daily  work  in  Geneva, 
had  the  effect  of  withdrawing  him  for  a  day  from  his 
solicitude  for  his  native  country.  On  leaving  it  he  wrote 
an  admirable  '  Letter  of  Wholesome  Counsel '  *  urging 
the  continual  study  of  the  word  of  God  in  families  and 
in  congregations. 

'  Within  your  own  houses,  I  say,  in  some  cases,  ye  are  bishops 
and  kings ;  your  wife,  children,  servants,  and  family  are  your 
bishopric  and  charge  ;  of  you  it  shall  be  required  how  carefully  and 
diligently  ye  have  always  instructed  them  in  God's  true  knowledge, 
how  that  ye  have  studied  in  them  to  plant  virtue  and  repress  vice. 
And  therefore,  I  say,  ye  must  make  them  partakers  in  reading,  ex- 
horting, and  in  making  common  prayers,  which,  I  would,  in  every 
house  were  used  once  a  day  at  least.' 

*  *  Works,'  iv.  129. 


72  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

And  for  each  congregation  he  urged  an  order  of  pro- 
cedure much  nearer  that  of  apostoHc  times  than  that 
which  the  Reformed  Church,  at  his  own  instance,  after- 
wards instituted  in  Scotland. 

*  I  think  it  necessary  that  for  the  conference  [comparing]  of 
Scriptures,  assemblies  of  brethren  be  had.  The  order  therein  to  be 
observed  is  expressed  by  St  Paul,'  .  .  .  after  *  confession '  and 
'  invocation,'  *  let  some  place  of  Scripture  be  plainly  and  distinctly 
read,  so  much  as  shall  be  thought  sufficient  for  one  day  or  time, 
which  ended,  if  any  brother  have  exhortation,  question,  or  doubt, 
let  him  not  fear  to  speak  or  move  the  same,  so  that  he  do  it  v^^ith 
moderation,  either  to  edify  or  to  be  edified.  And  hereof  I  doubt 
not  but  great  profit  shall  shortly  ensue ;  for,  first,  by  hearing  read- 
ing and  conferring  the  Scriptures  in  the  Assembly,  the  whole  body 
of  the  Scriptures  of  God  shall  become  familiar,  the  judgments  and 
spirits  of  men  shall  be  tried,  their  patience  and  modesty  shall  be 
known,  and  finally  their  gifts  and  utterance  shall  appear.' 

If  any  difficulty  of  interpretation  occurs,  it  should  be 
'put  in  writing  before  ye  dismiss  the  congregation,' 
with  the  view  of  consulting  some  wise  adviser.  Many, 
he  hopes,  would  be  glad  to  help  them. 

*  Of  myself  I  will  speak  as  I  think ;  I  will  more  gladly  spend 
fifteen  hours  in  communicating  my  judgment  with  you,  in  explaining 
as  God  pleases  to  open  to  me  any  place  of  Scripture,  than  half  an 
hour  in  any  matter  beside.' 

Before  six  months  had  passed,  however,  Knox,  who 
was  again  abroad,  had  become  troubled  by  the  too  great 
freedom  of  opinion  and  the  dangers  of  consequent  free- 
dom of  life  even  in  the  Protestant  community,  and  his 
letter  'To  the  Brethren'*  in  Scotland  from  Dieppe, 
against  Anabaptists  and  Sectarians,  foreshadows  the 
more  rigid  form  which  was  to  be  one  day  impressed  upon 
Church  doctrine  and  life  in  his  native  land. 

During  the  ensuing  year,  1557,  everything  was  peace- 
ful and  hopeful.  The  Protestants  kept  their  worship 
*  *  Works,'  iv.  261. 


JOHN  KNOX  73 

private,  but  it  spread  from  town  to  town,  and  from  the 
land  of  one  friendly  baron  to  his  neighbours'  territory. 
Knox  had  been  formally  condemned,  but  those  he  left 
behind  were  not  molested,  and  in  March  four  of  the 
Lords  wrote  him  to  Geneva  asking  him  to  return  to 
Scotland.  They  accompanied  this  with  assurances  that 
though  *  the  Magistrates  in  this  country '  were  in  the 
same  state  as  before,  the  Churchmen  there  were  daily  in 
less  estimation.  After  consulting  Calvin,  Knox  said 
farewell  to  his  congregation,  and  had  got  as  far  home- 
wards as  Dieppe,  where  he  was  much  disappointed  to 
receive  '  contrary  letters.'  His  reply,  indignantly  ac- 
quiescing, indicates  the  plan  which  by  this  time  he  had 
formed  in  order  to  solve  the  combined  difficulties  in  theory 
and  practice  which  beset  Scotland.  He  reminded  his 
correspondents — Glencairn,  Lome,  Erskine,  and  James 
Stewart — in  very  memorable  words,  that  they  were  them- 
selves magistrates,  or  at  least  representatives  of  the 
people,  and  had  duties  accordingly. 

'  Your  subjects,  yea,  your  brethren,  are  oppressed,  their  bodies 
and  souls  holden  in  bondage  ;  and  God  speaketh  to  your  consciences 
(unless  ye  be  dead  with  the  blind  world)  that  you  ought  to  hazard 
your  own  lives  (be  it  against  kings  and  emperors)  for  their  deliver- 
ance. For  only  for  that  cause  are  ye  called  Princes  of  the  people, 
and  ye  receive  of  your  brethren  honour,  tribute  and  homage  at  God's 
commandment ;  not  by  reason  of  your  birth  and  progeny  (as  the 
most  part  of  men  falsely  do  suppose),  but  by  reason  of  your  office 
and  duty,  which  is  to  vindicate  and  deliver  your  subjects  and 
brethren  from  all  violence  and  oppression,  to  the  utmost  of  your 
power.'  * 

The  effect  of  this  and  other  encouragements  was  to 
bring  matters  to  a  point  in  Scotland.  The  Protestant 
party,  which  had  now  been  joined  by  Argyll  and 
Morton,  entered  into  the  kind  of  engagement  which 
was  then  called  a  *  Band,'  and  afterwards  became  widely 

*  'Works,'  i.  272. 


74  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

known  in  Scotland  as  a  *  Covenant.'  This  document, 
dated  3rd  December  1557,  bound  the  signatories  to 
*  apply  our  whole  power,  substance,  and  our  very  lives, 
to  maintain,  set  forward,  and  establish  the  most  blessed 
Word  of  God  and  his  congregation  ....  unto  which 
holy  word  and  congregation  we  do  join  us,  and  also  do 
forsake  and  renounce  the  congregation  of  Satan.'  This 
important  step,  which  seems  to  have  been  represented 
by  rumour  in  Dieppe  as  something  like  rebellion  in 
Scotland,  apparently  startled  Knox.  A  fortnight  after 
it  took  place  he  writes  the  *  Lords  of  the  Congregation,' 
as  they  were  henceforth  called,  a  letter  of  caution,  urging 
them  to 

'  seek  the  favour  of  the  Authority,  that  by  it,  if  possible  be,  the 
cause  in  which  ye  labour  may  be  promoted,  or  at  the  least  7tot  perse- 
cuted^ which  thing  after  all  humble  request  if  ye  can  not  attain, 
then,  with  open  and  solemn  protestation  of  your  obedience  to  be 
given  to  the  Authority  in  all  things  not  plainly  repugning  to  God, 
ye  lawfully  may  attempt  the  extremity,  which  is  to  provide, 
whether  the  Authority  will  consent  or  no,  that  Christ's  Evangel 
may  be  duly  preached,  and  his  holy  Sacraments  rightly  ministered 
unto  you,  and  to  your  brethren  the  subjects  of  that  realm.' 

The  Lords  of  the  Congregation  were  disposed  to  be 
at  least  as  cautious  as  Knox,  and  during  the  following 
year,  1558,  there  was  a  remarkable  approximation  to  a 
possible  settlement  in  Scotland  on  the  basis  of  tolera- 
tion. The  '  Band '  of  the  congregation  does  not  at  all 
suggest  that  the  Barons  who  joined  in  it,  and  thereby 
bound  themselves  to  defend  their  religion  against  the 
pressure  and  tyranny  of  outsiders,  would  think  it  right 
themselves  to  exercise  a  counter  pressure  and  tyranny 
upon  their  own  vassals  within  their  own  lands.  And 
Knox's  intimation  that  the  Authority — i.e.^  the  Regent 
and  Parliament — though  refusing  to  promote  the  Evangel, 
ought  to  be  asked  at  least  not  to  persecute  it,  was  most 
timely.     He  held,  indeed,  at  this  time,  that  such  a  con- 


JOHN  KNOX  75 

cession,  if  granted,  ought  to  bar  not  only  insurrection, 
but  even  a  partial  and  divided  establishment  of  religion. 
The  state  of  matters  was  reflected  in  two  resolutions 
which  the  Congregation  came  to  immediately  after  the 
Band.  By  the  first,  common  prayers  were  to  be  read  on 
Sundays  in  the  churches — which  must  mean  in  the 
churches  where  the  innovators  had  influence — by  the 
curates,  *  if  qualified,'  and,  if  not,  by  those  of  the 
parishioners  who  were.  But  the  second  provided  that 
preaching  be,  in  the  meantime,  '  had  and  used  privately 
in  quiet  houses,'  great  conventions  being  avoided  '  till 
God  move  the  Prince  to  grant  public  preaching.'  And 
another  influence  now  entered  into  the  history.  Knox 
had  initiated  an  aristocratic  revolution.  But  the  Burghs 
of  Scotland  had  been  there,  as  in  every  other  country  of 
Europe,  fortresses  of  freedom  and  the  advance-guard  of 
constitutional  civilisation.  And  it  was  now  resolved, 
that  the  brethren  in  every  town  *  should  assemble 
together.  And  this  our  weak  beginning  did  God  so 
bless,  that  within  few  months  the  hearts  of  many  were  so 
strengthened,  that  we  sought  to  have  the  face  of  a  church 
among  us.'  .  .  .  And  the  town  of  Dundee  in  particular 
*  began  to  erect  the  face  of  a  public  church  reformed.'  * 
Henceforward  the  great  towns  became  more  and  more 
prepared  to  be  the  centres  of  the  future  struggle. 
Meantime,  however,  early  in  1558,  the  'First  Petition 
of  the  Protestants  of  Scotland'  was  presented  to  the 
Regent.  It  protested  against  the  existing  tyranny,  and 
craved,  in  general  and  cautious  terms,  a  'public  Re- 
formation,' laying  stress  on  church  services  in  the  vulgar 
tongue,  and  oflering  to  submit  differences  to  be  publicly 
decided,  not  only  by  the  New  Testament,  but  by  the 
writings  of  the  Fathers  and  the  laws  of  Justinian.  The 
offer  seems  to  have  been  at  once  accepted.  But,  accord- 
ing to  the  account  of  Knox,  who,  of  course,  was  still 

*  *  Works,'  i.  300. 


76  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

abroad,  the  proposed  public  discussion  came  to  nothing, 
because  both  parties  fell  back  upon  other  conditions  of 
arbitration ;  the  Protestants  now  demanding  that  the  Scrip- 
tures alone  should  decide  all  controversy,  the  Catholics 
insisting  on  Councils  and  Canon  Law.  The  next  step 
was  a  proposal  by  the  Bishops  of  *  Articles  of  Recon- 
ciliation,' according  to  which  the  Old  Church  was  to 
remain  publicly  established,  while  the  Protestants  might 
privately  pray  and  baptise  in  the  vulgar  tongue.  This 
the  innovating  party  declined,  and  pressed  for  '  reforma- 
tion.' And  now  the  Regent,  whom  Knox  afterwards 
came  to  regard  as  '  crafty  and  dissimulate,'  and  who,  no 
doubt,  even  now  desired  to  please  and  '  make  her  profit 
of  both  parties,'  announced  to  the  Congregation  her 
decision.  '  She  gave  to  us  permission  to  use  ourselves 
godly,  according  to  our  desires,  provided  that  we  should 
not  make  public  assemblies  in  Edinburgh  or  Leith  ' — i.e.^ 
in  the  capital.  The  Queen  went  so  far  as  to  promise 
positive  '  assistance  to  our  preachers,'  the  assistance  no 
doubt  being  rather  private  and  personal,  and  the  whole 
arrangement  being  an  interim  one,  '  until  some  uniform 
order  might  be  established  by  a  Parliament.'  It  was  a 
great  step  in  advance ;  indeed,  Knox  says,  '  we  departed 
fully  contented  with  her  answer ; '  *  and  it  is  impossible 
not  to  speculate  on  what  the  result  might  have  been  had 
the  order  finally  established  by  Parliament  been  that 
both  parties  should  permanently  '  use  themselves  godly 
according  to  their  desires,'  with  a  publicly  acknowledged 
right  of  proselytism  or  persuasion. 

But  from  both  sides  there  still  came  some  things 
hostile  to  the  advent  in  Scotland  of  that  toleration 
which  the  modern  conscience  has  approved.  In  April 
1558  Walter  Myln,  a  priest  eighty-two  years  of  age,  was 
seized  by  order  of  the  Archbishop  of  St  Andrews,  con- 
demned for  heresy,  and  burned  there  amid  the  general 
*  *  Works,'  i.  307. 


JOHN  KNOX  77 

but  ineffectual  resentment  of  the  people.  The  sentence 
was  quite  legal  under  the  laws  which  still  enforced 
membership  of  the  Catholic  Church  upon  all  Scotch- 
men. But  the  last  man  who  had  been  so  condemned 
was  Knox ;  and  he  no  longer  delayed  to  publish  in 
Geneva  an  Appellation  or  appeal  against  his  sentence, 
directed  to  the  nobles,  the  estates  and  the  commonalty 
of  Scotland.  His  demand  for  a  return  to  the  primitive 
Gospel  under  the  Divine  authority  is  powerful  and 
eloquent.  His  reasons,  on  the  other  hand,  for  *  appeal 
from  the  sentence  and  judgment  of  the  visible  Church 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  temporal  magistrate '  are  diffi- 
cult to  reconcile  with  the  position  which  Knox  after- 
wards took  up  when  that  Church  was  on  his  own  side ; 
and  they  are  indeed  chiefly  drawn  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. It  is  not  until  we  observe  from  his  re-statement 
of  the  case  farther  on,  that  his  was  an  appeal  '  against 
a  sentence  of  death,'  that  the  argument  once  more 
straightens  itself  out  so  as  to  suit  the  lips  even  of  Paul. 
But  Knox  declines  now  to  remain  on  the  defensive. 
He  accuses  his  accusers  of  heresy  and  idolatry,  and 
calls  upon  the  nobles  of  Scotland  to  decide  against 
them  according  to  God's  Word.  Here,  again,  the 
appeal,  so  long  as  it  is  made  to  the  conscience  of  all 
men  and  of  nobles  alike,  is  very  cogent.  Nor  is  it 
less  so  as  addressed  specially  to  the  most  representative 
and  intelligent  Scotchmen  of  the  time,  for  such  the 
Lords  of  the  Congregation  undoubtedly  were.  It  be- 
comes doubtful  only  when  it  insists  on  the  right  of 
these  temporal  '  Princes  of  the  people  '  to  reform  the 
Church — apparently  even  without  the  consent  of  its 
majority ;  and  it  becomes  worse  than  doubtful  when 
he  urges  their  duty  as  magistrates  to  repress  false  re- 
ligion and  to  punish  idolatry  with  death.  Along  with 
this,  however,  was  published  a  shorter  letter  *  To  his 
Beloved  Brethren  the  Commonalty  of  Scotland.'     To 


78  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

these  subjects  born  within  the  same,  their  brother 
John  Knox  wishes  in  it  *the  spirit  of  righteous  judg- 
ment ; '  and  that  in  a  tone  of  independence  which  must 
have  sounded  to  Scottish  peasants  and  burghers  like  a 
call  to  a  new  life.  For  in  this  treatise,  unlike  the  last, 
each  private  Scottish  man  is  urged  to  judge  of  what 
claimed  to  be  the  original  truth,  even  against  an  ad- 
mittedly ancient  system.  And  *  If  that  system  was  an 
error  in  the  beginning,  so  it  is  in  the  end,  and  the 
longer  that  it  be  followed,  and  the  more  that  do  receive 
it,  it  is  the  more  pestilent,  and  more  to  be  avoided.' 

'  Neither  would  I  that  ye  should  esteem  the  Reformation  and 
care  of  religion  less  to  appertain  to  you,  because  ye  are  no  kings, 
rulers,  judges,  nobles,  nor  in  authority.  Beloved  brethren,  ye  are 
God's  creatures,  created  and  formed  to  His  own  image  and  simili- 
tude, for  whose  redemption  was  shed  the  most  precious  blood  of 
the  only  beloved  Son  of  God.  .  .  .  For  albeit  God  hath  put  and 
ordained  distinction  and  difference  between  the  king  and  subjects, 
between  the  rulers  and  the  common  people,  in  the  regimen  and 
administration  of  civil  policies,  yet  in  the  hope  of  the  life  to  come 
He  hath  made  all  equal.  .  .  .  And  this  is  the  equality  which 
is  between  the  king  and  subjects,  the  most  rich  or  noble,  and  be- 
tween the  poorest  and  men  of  lowest  estate ;  to  wit,  that  as  the 
one  is  obliged  to  believe  in  heart,  and  with  mouth  to  confess,  the 
Lord  Jesus  to  be  the  only  Saviour  of  the  world,  so  also  is  the 
other.* 

And  by  this  time  Knox  has  reasoned  out  for  himself 
the  right  of  the  people  to  maintain  the  true  Church,  and 
to  band  in  defence  of  it — though  that  right  he  even  now 
recognises  only  when  they  cannot  do  better. 

*  And  if  in  this  point  your  superiors  be  negligent,  or  yet  pretend 
to  maintain  tyrants  in  their  tyranny,  most  justly  ye  may  provide 
true  teachers  for  yourselves,  be  it  in  your  cities,  towns,  or  villages  : 
them  ye  may  maintain  and  defend  against  all  that  shall  persecute 
them,  and  by  that  means  shall  labour  to  defraud  you  of  that  most 
comfortable  food  of  your  souls,  Christ's]  evangel  trulyjj  preached. 


JOHN  KNOX  79 

Ye  may,  moreover,  withhold  the  fruits  and  profits  which  your  false 
Bishops  and  clergy  most  unjustly  receive  of  you,  unto  such  time  as 
they  be  compelled  faithfully  to  do  their  charge  and  duties.' 

These  appeals  by  Knox  can  only  have  made  their 
way  in  Scotland  gradually  and  privately.  But  as  the 
year  1558  went  on,  the  prospect  of  union  became  more 
hopeful.  The  Queen  Regent  acted  as  if  *  the  duty  of 
the  Magistrate '  were  to  prevent  majorities  and  minorities 
from  laying  hands  on  each  other.  And,  then  at  least, 
this  was  not  an  easy  work.  The  Bishops  tyrannised  in 
details  in  localities  where  the  barons  were  still  on  their 
side ;  but  Myln  was  the  last  Protestant  martyr  in  Scot- 
land. On  the  other  hand,  the  adherents  of  the  con- 
gregation became  so  bold,  especially  in  the  towns,  that 
(as  Knox  tells  us)  '  the  images  were  stolen  away  in  all 
parts  of  the  country,  and  in  Edinburgh  was  that  great 
idol  called  St  Gile  first  drowned  in  the  North  Loch,  and 
after  burned.'  *  This  was  too  much,  and  the  Regent 
allowed  the  Bishops  to  summon  the  iconoclast  preachers 
for  the  19th  of  July.  But  a  party  of  Western  lairds 
heard  of  it  on  their  way  from  the  army  of  the  Border, 
and  insisted  on  interviewing  the  Queen.  Knox's  vivid 
account  of  what  followed  must  be  quoted.  It  includes 
a  delicious  phonograph  of  the  Scots  speech  of  Mary  of 
Lorraine,  who,  to  the  desire  to  please  all  men  which  was 
common  to  her  with  her  more  famous  daughter,  seems 
to  have  added  real  good  nature  and  kindliness  of  heart. 
James  Chalmers  of  Gadgirth,  a  rough  Ayrshireman, 
burst  out  against  the  Bishops — 

*  "  Madam,  we  vow  to  God  we  shall  make  one  day  of  it.  They 
oppress  us  and  our  tenants  for  feeding  of  their  idle  bellies ;  they 
trouble-  our  preachers,  and  would  murder  them  and  us  :  shall  we 
suffer  this  any  longer?  No,  madam,  it  shall  not  be."  And  there- 
with every  man  put  on  his  steel  bonnet.  There  was  heard  nothing 
of  the  Queen's  part  but  "  My  joys,  my  hearts,  what  ails  you  ?     Me 

*  'Works,' i.  256, 


8o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

means  no  evil  to  you  nor  to  your  preachers.  The  Bishops  shall  do  you 
no  wrong.  Ye  are  all  my  loving  subjects.  Me  knew  nothing  of  this 
proclamation.  The  day  of  your  preachers  shall  be  discharged,  and 
me  will  hear  the  controversy  that  is  betwixt  the  Bishops  and  you. 
They  shall  do  you  no  wrong.  My  Lords,"  said  she  to  the  Bishops, 
"  I  forbid  you  either  to  trouble  them  or  their  preachers."  And 
unto  the  gentlemen,  who  were  wondrously  cdmmoved,  she  turned 
again  and  said,  "  O,  my  hearts,  should  ye  not  love  the  Lord  your 
God  with  all  your  heart,  with  all  your  mind  ?  and  should  ye  not 
love  your  neighbours  as  yourselves  ?  "  "With  these  and  the  like  fair 
words  she  kept  the  Bishops  from  buffets  at  that  time.'  * 

Her  daughter  Mary,  the  celebrated  Queen  of  Scots, 
had  been  married  in  April  to  Francis,  the  Dauphin  of 
France,  and  the  Regent,  rejoicing  in  this  long  hoped-for 
alliance,  had  one  thing  more  at  heart.  The  Scots  Parlia- 
ment was  to  meet  in  November,  and  she  hoped  that  it 
would  confer  the  crown  '  Matrimonial '  of  Scotland  upon 
her  son-in-law,  thus  consolidating  the  two  kingdoms.  In 
view  of  this  meeting  the  Lords  of  the  Congregation  pre- 
pared a  petition,  the  leading  prayer  of  which  would  have 
practically  freed  Scotland  from  the  intolerance  of  existing 
legislation  in  the  matter  of  religion — 

'  We  most  humbly  desire  that  all  such  Acts  of  Parliament^  as  in 
the  time  of  darkness  gave  power  to  the  churchmen  to  execute  their 
tyranny  against  us,  by  reason  that  we  to  them  were  delated  as 
heretics,  may  be  suspended  and  abrogated.''  f 

Here  again  was  a  proposal  which,  if  taken  by  itself, 
would  have  satisfied  the  modern  view  of  liberty  of  con- 
science. But  the  petitioners  went  on  to  say  that  they 
did  not  object  to  a  temporal  judge  of  heresy,  provided 
he  judged  according  to  the  Word  of  God;  and  they 
looked  forward  to  a  decision  of  'all  controversies  in 
religion,'  not  however  by  Parliament,  but  by  a  General 
Council.  This  proposal  was  first  handed  to  the  Queen 
Regent,  who  '  spared  not  amiable  looks  and  good  words 

*  *  Works,'  i.  258.  t  '  Works,'  i,  310. 


JOHN  KNOX  8 1 

in  abundance,  but  always  she  kept  our  Bill  close  in  her 
pocket.'  Both  parties  in  Parliament  being  thus  pleased, 
the  Crown  Matrimonial  was  consented  to,  and  before 
the  Session  closed,  the  Protestant  Lords  read  an  im- 
portant protest,  repeating  the  positions  which  they  had 
already  taken  up. 

1.  *  We  protest,  that  seeing  we  cannot  obtain  a  just  reformation, 
according  to  God's  word,  that  it  be  lawful  to  us  to  use  ourselves  in 
matters  of  religion  and  conscience,  as  we  must  answer  unto  God. 

2.  '  That  we  shall  incur  no  danger  in  life  or  lands,  or  other 
political  pains,  for  not  observing  such  h  cts  as  heretofore  have  passed 
in  favour  of  our  adversaries.' 

They  added  a  protest  that  if  any  tumult  should  arise 
'  for  the  diversity  of  religion,'  and  if  any  abuses  should 
be  *  violently  reformed,'  it  should  not  be  imputed  to 
them,  who  desired  a  reformation  in  matters  of  religion  by 
the  Authority.  From  that  Authority,  however,  they,  in 
closing — somewhat  inconsistently  but  most  rightfully — 
demanded  once  more  the  '  indifferency '  which  becometh 
God's  Lieutenant. 

Parliament  declined  to  record  the  Protest,  but  the 
Queen  Regent  said  in  her  confidential  way  to  the  Lords, 

*  Me  will  remember  what  is  protested ;  and  me  shall  put 
good  order  after  this  to  all  things.'  Knox  was  delighted, 
and  in  writing  to  Calvin  commended  her  '  for  excellent 
knowledge  in  God's  word,  and  good  will  towards  the 
advancement  of  his  glory.'  There  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  Mary  of  Lorraine  had  attained  to  much 
more  than  a  kindly  appreciation  of  all  parties  around 
her,  and  to  that  general  sense  of  justice  which  is  strong 
in  rulers  and  other  men  so  long  as  they  have  no  per- 
sonal interest  to  the  contrary.     Yet  under  this  feminine 

*  regimen '  Scotland  was  now  within  measurable  distance 
of  being,  alone  among  the  commonwealths  of  Europe, 
the  home  of  liberty  of  worship  and  freedom  of  con- 
science.    But  that  great  time  was  not  come ;  and  the 

4  F 


S2  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

small  northern  land  was  now  caught  up  again  into  the 
whirl  of  European  politics.  On  the  17  th  November 
1558  Mary  of  England,  the  unhappy  wife  of  Philip, 
died ;  and  her  Protestant  sister  Elizabeth,  the  daughter 
of  Anne  Boleyn,  succeeded.  It  became  at  once  the 
chief  point  in  the  policy  of  Catholic  Europe  that  France 
and  Scotland  should  be  fast  bound  together  in  religion 
and  turned,  along  v/ith  Spain,  as  one  force  for  the 
restoration  or  re-conquest  of  England.  For  if  the 
English  queen  was  an  illegitimate  heretic,  then  Mary 
Stuart,  already  Queen  of  Scotland  and  Dauphiness 
of  France,  was  now  Queen  of  England  too ;  and 
without  delay  the  French  king  quartered  the  arms  of 
England  with  those  of  Mary's  own  country  and  that  of 
her  adoption.  The  magnificent  bribe  of  a  third  crown 
for  that  fair  *  daughter  of  debate '  was  too  much  for  her 
mother  in  Scotland,  who  in  any  case  would  have  found 
a  continued  toleration  there  irreconcileable  with  the 
traditions  of  their  House  of  Guise.  The  Regent  now, 
in  her  mild  way,  joined  the  cruel  Catholic  crusade  of 
the  French  Court,  and  from  the  beginning  of  1559  the 
conciliatory  policy  which  had  distinguished  the  previous 
year  in  Scotland  was  at  an  end. 

But  its  results  were  not  ended.  They  had  spread 
through  all  ranks,  and  had  gone  down  to  the  foundations 
of  society.  On  New  Year's  Day  of  1559  there  was 
found  affixed  to  the  door  of  every  religious  house  in 
Scotland  the  following  document — the  most  extraor- 
dinary imitation  of  a  legal  writ  that  Scotland  has  seen. 
It  is  probably  not  written  by  Knox,  but  by  some  other 
strong  pen.  It  bears  to  be  a  notice  or  *  summons '  of 
ejectment  for  the  ensuing  Whitsunday,  and  is  called 

The  Beggars'  Warning. 
The  Blind,  Crooked,  Bedrels  [bedfast],  Widows,  Orphans,  and 
all  other  Poor,  so  visited  by  the  hand  of  God  as  they  may 
not  work, 


JOHN  KNOX  83 

TO 

The  Flocks  of  all  Friars  within  this  realm,  we  wish  restitution  of 
wrongs  bypast,  and  reformation  in  time  coming,  for  salutation. 

Ye  yourselves  are  not  ignorant,  and  though  ye  would  be  it  is  now, 
thanks  to  God,  known  to  the  whole  world,  by  His  infallible  word, 
that  the  benignity  or  alms  of  all  Christian  people  pertains  to  us 
allanerly  [exclusively] ;  which  ye,  being  hale  of  body,  stark,  sturdy, 
and  able  to  work,  what  [partly]  under  pretence  of  poverty  (and 
nevertheless  possessing  most  easily  all  abundance)  what  [partly] 
through  cloaked  and  hooded  simplicity,  though  your  proudness  is 
knowTi,  and  what  [partly]  by  feigned  holiness,  which  now  is  declared 
superstition  and  idolatry,  have  these  many  years,  express  against 
God's  word  and  the  practice  of  His  Holy  Apostles,  to  our  great  tor- 
ment alas !  most  falsely  stolen  from  us.  And  as  ye  have,  by  your  false 
doctrine  and  wresting  of  God's  word  (learned  of  your  father  Satan), 
induced  the  whole  people  high  and  low,  into  sure  hope  and  belief, 
that  to  clothe,  feed,  and  nourish  you  is  the  only  acceptable  alms 
allowed  before  God,  and  to  give  one  penny  or  one  piece  of  bread 
once  in  the  week,  is  enough  for  us ;  Even  so  ye  have  persuaded 
them  to  build  to  you  great  hospitals,  and  maintain  you  therein  by  their 
purse,  which  only  pertains  now  to  us  by  all  law,  as  builded  and 
doted  [given]  to  the  poor — of  whose  number  ye  are  not,  nor  can  be 
repute,  neither  by  the  law  of  God,  nor  yet  by  no  other  law  pro- 
ceeding of  nature,  reason,  or  civil  policy.  .  .  .  We  have  thought 
good,  therefore,  before  we  enter  with  you  in  conflict,  to  warn  you, 
in  the  name  of  the  great  God,  by  this  public  writing,  affixed  on  your 
gates,  where  ye  now  dwell,  that  ye  remove  forth  of  our  said  hos- 
pitals betwixt  this  and  the  feast  of  Whitsunday  next,  so  that  we  the 
only  lawful  proprietors  thereof  may  enter  thereto,  and  afterward 
enjoy  these  commodities  of  the  Kirky  which  ye  have  hereunto 
wrongously  holden  from  us  :  Certifying  you,  if  ye  fail,  we  will  at  the 
said  term,  in  whole  number  (with  the  help  of  God  and  the  assistance 
of  His  saints  in  earth,  of  whose  readie  support  we  doubt  not),  enter 
and  take  possession  of  otir  said  patrimony ^  and  eject  you  utterly 
forth  of  the  same. 

Let  him  therefore  that  before  has  stoien,  steal  no  more  ;  but  rather 
et  him  work  with  his  hands  that  he  may  be  helpful  to  the  poor. 
From    the   whole  Cities,  Towns,    and   Villages   of 
Scotland,  the  First  Day  of  January,  1558  [1559].* 

*  'Works,' i.  320. 


84  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

As  it  turned  out,  this  summons  was  in  some  cases 
literally  fulfilled,  and  a  revolutionary  ejectment  carried 
out  by  Whitsunday  1559.  But  now  from  another  side 
came  another  warning  to  put  the  house  of  the  Church 
in  order.  The  Catholic  barons  presented  a  petition  for 
its  reform,  and  the  Regent  called  a  Provincial  Council 
on  I  St  March.  It  dealt,  however,  almost  exclusively  with 
the  lives  and  duties  of  the  clergy,  and  leaving  untouched 
the  central  grievance — the  legal  authority  of  the  Church 
and  of  the  Pope  over  all  subjects — had  no  effect 
whatever  on  the  public.  Immediately  after,  all  *  un- 
authorised '  preaching  was  forbidden.  The  Protestants, 
astonished,  waited  on  the  Regent  and  reminded  her  of 
her  promises.  She  replied,  in  words  which  were  often 
recalled  during  the  reigns  of  her  Stewart  descendants, 
that  *it  became  not  subjects  to  burden  their  Princes 
with  promises,  farther  than  it  pleaseth  them  to  keep  the 
same,'  and  the  preachers  were  ordered  to  appear  before 
her  at  Stirling.  But  now  Knox,  who  had  kept  up  con- 
stant communication  from  Geneva  with  his  friends, 
suddenly  appears  on  the  scene.  On  2d  May  he  writes 
from  Edinburgh  to  Mrs  Locke : 

*  I  am  come,  I  praise  my  God,  even  in  the  brunt  of  the  battle  : 
for  my  fellow-preachers  have  a  day  appointed  to  answer  before  the 
Queen  Regent,  the  loth  of  this  instant,  where  I  intend,  if  God 
impede  not,  also  to  be  present :  by  life,  by  death,  or  else  by  both, 
to  glorify  His  godly  name,  who  thus  mercifully  hath  heard  my  long 
cries.'  * 

The  day  after  this  letter  was  written,  Knox  was  *  blown 
loud  to  the  horn,'  i.e.,  declared  an  excommunicated  out- 
law :  but  he  had  meantime  left  for  Dundee,  where  he 
was  received  with  acclamation,  and  from  thence  departed 
to  Perth,  now  the  centre  of  Protestantism.  There,  day 
by  day,  he  preached  to  excited  multitudes  in  the  Parish 

*  'Works,'  vi.  21. 


JOHN  KNOX  8s 

Church ;  and  it  was  after  a  sermon  there,  '  vehement 
against  idolatry,'  that  a  foolish  priest,  attempting  to 
perform  mass  in  the  same  building,  was  set  upon  by 
the  mob  of  Perth,  who  had  an  old  feud  with  the 
clergy.  From  the  church  the  multitude  streamed 
away  to  the  magnificent  Religious  Houses  which  had 
adorned  the  town,  and  sacked  and  burned  them  so 
thoroughly  that  only  the  walls  were  left  standing.  It 
wanted  yet  four  days  to  that  Whitsunday,  for  ejection 
on  which  the  *  rascal  multitude'  had  last  New  Year's 
Day  warned  the  Friars  !  The  Queen  Regent  resented 
this  outrageous  violence,  but  was  forced  to  come  to  an 
interim  agreement  with  the  Lords  of  the  Congregation. 
On  her  entry  into  Perth  they  moved  into  Fife,  and  Knox 
having  preached  in  Crail  and  Anstruther,  resolved  to  do 
so  also  in  the  Parish  Church  of  St  Andrews  on  Sunday. 
But  the  St  Andrews  populace  had  not  yet  declared  them- 
selves ;  the  Regent's  hostile  army  was  only  twelve  miles 
off;  and  the  Archbishop — who  had  occupied  the  town 
wdth  a  hundred  spears  and  a  dozen  of  culverins — now 
threatened  his  life  if  he  attempted  it.  It  was  a  moment 
for  a  bold  man.  At  the  hour  fixed  Knox  made  his 
appearance.  No  one  ventured  to  attack  him.  He 
preached  with  his  usual  impetuous  eloquence  on 
'casting  the  buyers  and  sellers  out  of  the  temple,' 
and  at  its  close  the  magistrates  and  council  permitted 
the  majority  of  the  people  to  destroy  most  of  the 
monasteries,  and  strip  the  churches  and  cathedral  of 
their  apparatus  of  'idolatry.'  Knox  was  always  more 
comfortable  where  he  could  say  that  such  proceedings 
were  countenanced  by  the  local  authority,  or  by  the 
majority  of  a  civic  community.  In  Edinburgh,  to 
which  the  Congregation  next  moved,  the  majority  had 
hitherto  been  hostile  to  them ;  and  now,  on  the  Queen 
Regent's  departure,  the  pulpits  were  for  the  first  time 
opened  to  what  was  the  legitimate  glory  of  the  new  move- 


86  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

ment — free  and  unfettered  preaching.  Knox,  church- 
statesman  though  he  was,  threw  himself  into  this  work 
with  a  delight  that  lifted  him  above  calculation  of 
consequences. 

'The  long  thirst  of  my  wretched  heart' is  satisfied,  in  abundance 
that  is  above  my  expectation ;  for  now,  forty  days  and  more  hath 
God  used  my  tongue  in  my  native  country  to  the  manifestation  of 
His  glory.  Whatever  now  shall  follow,  as  touching  my  own  carcase, 
His  Holy  Name  be  praised. '  * 

The  castle,  however,  still  remained  faithful  to  the 
Regent,  and  on  her  forces  approaching  Edinburgh, 
both  parties  agreed  to  a  truce  till  January,  which,  as 
respects  the  town  and  its  religion,  provided  that — 

*The  town  of  Edinburgh  shall,  without  compulsion,  use  and  choose 
what  religion  and  manner  thereof  they  please,  to  the  said  day ;  so 
that  every  man  may  have  freedom  to  use  his  own  conscience  to  the  day 
foresaid. 't 

The  truce  was  to  be  for  six  months,  to  January  1560, 
and  it  was  employed  by  both  parties  in  preparing  for  a 
renewed  struggle,  and,  on  the  side  of  the  Congregation, 
in  negotiations  with  Elizabeth  and  her  ministers.  Politic- 
ally, this  last  step  was  of  the  highest  importance.  For 
the  first  time  for  centuries,  it  healed  the  breach  with  *  our 
auld  enemies  of  England,'  as  the  Scots  statutes  had  so 

*  'Works,' vi.  26. 

t  'Works,'  i.  378.  Knox  objected  to  this  unlimited  freedom  of 
conscience  being  granted,  even  for  a  time ;  and  actually  succeeded 
in  retaining  the  public  worship  on  the  ground  that  Edinburgh  had 
chosen  already,  though  under  compulsion.  The  interest  lies  in  the 
fact  that,  at  every  turn  of  the  open  struggle  which  now  took  place 
between  the  two  parties,  the  true  ultimate  solution,  that  of  tolera- 
tion, came  to  the  front.  But  it  was  proposed,  or  suggested,  by  each 
party  only  when  that  party  was  in  the  minority,  and  ignored  as  soon 
as  it  regained  the  power  to  do  wrong.  See  the  following  additional 
pages  in  Knox's  own  History  : — 'Works,'  i.  389,  390,  428  ('idolatry 
and  murder '),  432,  442  ('  chief  duty  '),  and  444. 


JOHN  KNOX  87 

often  described  them,  and  founded  an  alliance  between 
the  two  kingdoms,  which  has  since  that  date  been  only 
changed  in  order  to  become  a  union.  And  in  this 
negotiation  the  agent  and  secretary  was  Knox.*  He 
corresponded  with  the  Queen's  great  minister  Cecil 
(Elizabeth  herself  would  not  hear  Knox's  name).  And 
it  says  not  a  little  for  the  self-command  and  honesty  of 
the  English  statesman,  that  he  trusted  so  fully  a  man 
whose  first  letter,  written  several  years  before — a  letter, 
too,  asking  a  favour — commenced  by  Knox's  'discharging 
his  conscience '  in  this  way : — 

'  In  time  past,  being  overcome  with  common  iniquity,  you  have 
followed  the  world  in  the  way  of  perdition :  for  ...  to  the 
shedding  of  the  blood  of  God's  dear  children  have  you,  by 
silence,  consented  and  subscribed.  Of  necessity  it  is,  that  carnal 
wisdom  and  worldly  policy,  (to  both  which,  you  are  bruited  to  be 
much  inclined)  give  place  to  God's  simple  and  naked  truth.' 

Cecil  had  made  no  answer  to  this  or  to  similar 
subsequent  remarks,  but  he  now  wrote  asking  the 
Congregation, 

*  if  support  should  be  sent  hence,  what  manner  of  amity  might 
ensue  betwixt  these  two  realms,  and  how  the  same  might  be 
hoped  to  be  perpetual,  and  not  to  be  so  slender  as  heretofore  hath 
been,  without  other  assurance  of  continuance  than  from  time  to 
time  hath  pleased  France. ' 

And  the  answer,  in  Knox's  handwriting,  is  signed 
by  the  Protestant  lords,  and  assures  England 

*  of  our  constancy  (as  men  may  promise)  till  our  lives  end  ;  yea, 
farther,  we  will  divulgate  and  set  abroad  a  charge  and  command- 
ment to  our  posterity,  that  the  amity  and  league  between  you  and 
us  contracted  and  begun  in  Christ  Jesus  may  by  them  be  kept 
in  violated  for  ever.' 

*  Knox  himself  takes  care  in  his  History  *  to  let  the  posterity 
that  shall  follow  understand,  by  what  instruments  God  wrought 
the  familiarity  and  friendship,  that  after  we  found  in  England.' — 

*  Works,'  ii.  43. 


88  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

There  was  to  be  in  the  future  a  still  more  Solemn 
League  and  Covenant  between  the  two  nations,  it  too 
having  for  its  object  the  deliverance  (and,  alas !  also 
the  uniformity)  of  religion  in  both  kingdoms.  But 
that  public,  and  this  private,  league  were  alike  dis- 
avowed by  the  Sovereign,  and  both  became  the  badge 
of  rebellion.  The  Queen  Regent,  indeed,  had  now 
fortified  Leith,  and  was  filling  it  with  French  soldiers. 
The  Lords  of  the  Congregation,  founding  on  this 
as  a  breach  of  faith,  resolved  to  suspend  her  from 
the  regency,  and  did  so  by  a  proclamation,  strangely 
signed :  *  By  us,  the  nobility  and  commons  of  the 
Protestants  of  the  Church  of  Scotland.'  The  preachers 
approved,  Knox,  however,  demanding  that  a  door  be 
still  kept  open  for  her  restoration.  War,  of  course,  at 
once  followed,  and  it  turned  out  to  be  very  much  a 
fight  between  Edinburgh  and  Leith,  then  not  un- 
equally matched.*  Soon  the  Protestants  got  the 
worst  of  it.  On  the  last  day  of  October  the  French, 
pouring  up  Leith  Walk,  drove  them  back  into  the 
Canongate,  attacked  Leith  Wynd,  and  sent  their 
horsemen  in  headlong  flight  through  the  Netherbow 
Port  and  up  the  High  Street.  Five  days  after, 
the  forces  of  the  Congregation  having  advanced  to 
Restalrig,  were  enclosed  by  two  advancing  bodies  of 
the  enemy,  and  so  jammed  in  near  Holyrood,  be- 
tween the  crags  of  the  Calton  on  the  one  side  and  the 
crags  of  Arthur  Seat  on  the  other,  as  to  be  extricated 
only  with  most  serious   loss.     Confusion   and   dismay 

*  '  It  is  not  unknown  to  the  most  part  of  this  realm,  that  there 
has  been  an  old  hatred  and  contention  betwixt  Edinburgh  and 
Leith ;  Edinburgh  seeking  continually  to  possess  that  liberty  which 
by  donation  of  kings  they  have  long  enjoyed,  and  Leith,  by  the 
contrary,  aspiring  to  a  liberty  and  freedom  in  prejudice  of  Edin- 
burgh.'— Declaration  of  the  Lords  of  the  Congregation  in  1559. 
'Works,'  i.  426. 


JOHN  KNOX  89 

seized  upon  all,  and  at  midnight  they  marched  out  of 
Edinburgh,  pursued  by  voices  of  reproach  and  execra- 
tion from  the  overhanging  roofs.  Next  night  they 
gathered  helplessly  at  Stirhng.  But  on  the  following 
day  Knox  entered  the  pulpit  there,  and  preached  a 
memorable  sermon.  It  recalled  the  despairing  Con- 
gregation to  a  mood  of  resolute  trust  and  hope.  And 
yet  his  text  was  the  Psalm  which  tells  of  the  vine 
brought  from  Egypt  to  be  planted  in  the  land,  but 
now  wasted  and  broken  down ;  and  the  preacher 
throughout  refused  even  to  suggest  to  the  shrinking 
multitude  any  lower  hope  than  the  vouchsafed  shining 
again  of  the  Divine  countenance.  There  remains  only, 
he  concluded, 

*  that  we  turn  to  the  Eternal  our  God,  who  beats  down  to  death, 
to  the  intent  that  he  may  raise  up  again,  to  leave  the  remembrance  of 
his  wondrous  deliverance,  to  the  praise  of  his  own  name  .  .  .  yea, 
whatsoever  shall  become  of  us  and  of  our  mortal  carcases,  I  doubt 
not  but  that  this  cause,  in  despite  of  Satan,  shall  prevail  in  the 
realm  of  Scotland.' 

But  his  words  were  as  life  from  the  dead,  and  the 
sermon,  which  Buchanan  also  commemorates,  was  long 
after  recalled  by  the  preacher  himself  in  St  Giles,  in 
another  great  crisis  of  the  Evangel. 

*  From  the  beginning  of  God's  mighty  working  within  this  realm, 
I  have  been  with  you  in  your  most  desperate  tentations.  Ask  your 
own  consciences,  and  let  them  answer  you  before  God,  if  that  I — 
not  I,  but  God's  Spirit  by  me — in  your  greatest  extremity  willed  you 
not  ever  to  depend  upon  your  God,  and  in  His  name  promised  unto 
you  victory  and  preservation  from  your  enemies,  so  that  ye  would 
only  depend  upon  his  protection  and  prefer  His  glory  to  your  own 
lives  and  worldly  commodity.  In  your  most  extreme  dangers  I 
have  been  with  you :  St  Johnstone,  Cupar  Muir,  and  the  Crags  of 
Edinburgh,  are  yet  recent  in  my  heart :  yea,  that  dark  and  dolorous 
night  wherein  all  ye,  my  Lords,  with  shame  and  fear  left  this  town, 
is  yet  in  my  mind  ;  and  God  forbid  that  ever  I  forget  it  ! ' 

*The  voice  of  one  man,'  it  was  afterwards  said  of 


go  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Knox  by  the  English  ambassador  in  Edinburgh,  *  is  able 
in  one  hour  to  put  more  life  in  us  than  five  hundred 
trumpets  continually  blustering  in  our  ears.'  This  day 
in  Stirling  was  the  very  lowest,  point  of  the  fortunes 
of  the  Congregation,  and  from  this  hour  they  began 
to  rise.  There  were  reverses  still;  but  Scotland  was 
sick  of  the  French,  and  the  end  was  to  come  with 
the  coming  year.  In  April  1560,  the  English  forces 
surrounded  Leith;  the  Queen  Regent  withdrew  from 
it  into  the  Castle  of  Edinburgh;  and  the  Lords  of 
the  Congregation,  stronger  than  they  were  originally 
by  the  accession  of  the  Duke  of  Hamilton  and  the 
Earls    of    Morton    and    Huntly,*    made    one    more 

*  Band '  or  Covenant.  In  it  for  the  last  time  they  fall 
back  on  liberty  of  conscience ;  for  all  they  bind  them- 
selves to  is, 

*  with  our  bodies,  goods,  friends,  and  all  that  we  may  do,  to  set 
forward  the  Reformation  of  Religion,  according  to  God's  word  j  and 
procure,  by  all  means  possible,  that  the  truth  of  God's  word  may 
have  free  passage  within  this  realtn^  with  due  administration  of  the 
Sacraments,  and  all  things  depending  upon  the  said  word.'  t 

A  copy  of  this  Band,  by  which  each  subscriber  also 
bound  himself  not  to  make  separate  overtures  to  the 
Regent,  was  brought  to  her  in  the  Castle.  Knox,  who 
by  this  time  was  become  very  hostile  to  Mary  of 
Lorraine,  and  reports  much  doubtful  gossip  as  to  her 
rejoicing  over  the  victories  and  cruelties  of  her  soldiers, 
says  that  when  she  read  the  Band,  she  spoke  in  quite 
another  and  milder  sense. 

*  The  malediction  of  God  I  give  unto  them  that  counselled  me  to 
persecute  the  preachers,  and  to  refuse  the  petitions  of  the  best  part 
of  the  true  subjects  of  this  realm.' 

*  Lesser  barons  sign  too,  from  Cranstoun  and  Cessford  on  the 
Borders,  to  Leslie  of  Buchan  and  John  Innes  of  that  Ilk  in  the 
North. 

t  *  Works,'  ii.  61.     It  is  dated  26  April  1560. 


JOHN  KNOX  91 

But  the  time  was  past  for  her  co-operating  for  the 
welfare  of  that  realm.  She  had  fallen  into  a  dropsy, 
and,  becoming  daily  worse,  sent  for  the  Earls  Argyll, 
Glencairn,  and  Marischal,  and  the  Lord  James  (her 
husband's  son).  They  came  to  her  separately,  and  to 
each  she  confessed  that  she  had  made  a  mistake,  and 
should  have  acceded  to  the  arrangement  they  had  pro- 
posed. *  They  gave  unto  her  both  the  counsel  and  the 
comfort  which  they  could  in  that  extremity,  and  willed 
her  to  send  for  some  godly  learned  man,  of  whom  she 
might  receive  instruction.'  They  proposed  Willock ; 
but  even  that  gentle  preacher  did  not  set  forth  *  the 
virtue  and  strength  of  the  death  of  Jesus  Christ,'  without 
touching  also  upon  *  the  vanity  and  abomination  of  that 
idol,  the  mass.'  The  dying  woman  said  nothing,  good 
or  bad,  of  the  form  in  which  Christianity  had  been  first 
presented,  long  years  ago,  to  her  childish  eyes.  But 
*  she  did  openly  confess  "  that  there  was  no  salvation 
but  in  and  by  the  death  of  Jesus  Christ."  '  And  Knox, 
holding  that  in  this  *  Christ  Jesus  got  no  small  victory ' 
over  her,  grudges  extremely  that  to  her  approval  of  *  the 
chief  head  of  our  religion,  wherein  we  dissent  from  all 
Papists  and  Papistry,'  she  added  no  condemnation  of 
opposing  ways.  But  Mary  of  Lorraine  had  uttered  the 
last  even  of  her  good-natured  '  maledictions,'  and  on  the 
loth  of  June  the  Regent  of  Scotland  ended  her  *  un- 
happy life ' — a  life,  that  is,  which  had  pleased  neither 
party,  though  in  its  later  years  a  great  revolution,  carried 
through  at  the  expense  of  comparatively  little  violence 
or  bloodshed,  had  narrowly  missed  attaining  an  even 
ideal  result. 

And  now  those  troubles  were  over.  Nine  months  be- 
fore, her  daughter  had  become  Queen  of  France,  and  a 
treaty  was  now  concluded  at  Edinburgh,  between  the 
Queen  of  England  on  the  one  part  and  the  *  King  and 
Queen  of  France  and  Scotland '  on  the  other,  by  which 


92  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  French  troops  and  officials  withdrew  from  Scotland, 
and  an  indemnity  was  granted  to  the  insurgent  nobility 
for  all  that  the  Congregation  had  done.  Elizabeth  still 
looked  on  them  as  rebels ;  but  Cecil,  with  more  fore- 
sight, instructed  her  plenipotentiaries  to  provide  *  that 
the  government  of  Scotland  be  granted  to  the  nation  of 
the  land';  and  the  treaty  provided  for  a  Council  of 
Administration  in  the  absence  from  Edinburgh  of  the 
Sovereigns,  and — more  important  still — for  an  immediate 
meeting  of  the  Estates,  which  was  to  be  as  valid  as  if 
presided  over  by  them.*  The  most  important  Parlia- 
ment which  Scotland  has  ever  seen  sat  on  ist  August 
1560,  and  was  very  largely  attended  by  nobles,  lairds,  and 
burgh  representatives.  Naturally,  a  petition  was  at  once 
laid  before  it  for  the  abolition  of  the  old  Church  system. 
Equally  naturally,  this  was  met  by  a  request  for  a  state- 
ment of  the  new  Church  doctrine — a  confession  of  faith. 
It  was  prepared  by  Knox  and  three  others,  and  in  four 
days  presented  to  the  Parliament. 

'  I  never  heard,'  says  the  English  envoy  to  Cecil, 
'matters  of  so  great  importance,  neither  sooner  de- 
spatched nor  with  better  will  agreed  unto.'  Knox's 
narrative,  which  is  borne  out  by  the  records  of  Parlia- 
ment, says  that 

'  This  our  Confession  was  publicly  read,  first  in  audience  of  the 
Lords  of  the  Articles,  and  after,  in  audience  of  the  whole  Parlia- 
ment, where  were  present,  not  only  such  as  professed  Christ  Jesus, 

*  It  does  not  say  that  all  its  acts  were  to  be  valid.  On  the  con- 
trary, '  certain  Articles  concerning  religion '  having  been  presented 
on  the  part  of  the  nobles  and  people  of  Scotland,  and  not  meddled 
with  by  the  plenipotentiaries  'as  being  of  such  importance  that 
they  judged  them  proper  to  be  remitted  to  the  King  and  Queen,' 
it  was  provided  that  the  Estates,  on  their  meeting,  should  choose 
some  persons  of  quality  *  to  repair  to  their  Majesties  and  remon- 
strate to  them  the  state  of  their  affairs,  particularly  those  last 
mentioned. ' 


JOHN  KNOX  93 

but  also  a  great  number  of  the  adversaries  of  our  religion,  such  as 
the  fore-named  bishops,  and  some  others  of  the  temporal  estate, 
who  were  commanded,  in  God's  name,  to  object,  if  they  could, 
anything  against  that  doctrine.' 

The  ministers  were  present  to  defend  it,  but  there 
was  no  opposition,  and  a  second  day  was  appointed, 
when  the  Confession  was  again  read  over,  article  by 
article,  and  then  a  vote  was  taken.  Three,  or  at  the  most 
five,  temporal  peers  voted  against  ratifying  it ;  *  and  yet 
for  their  disassenting  they  produced  no  better  reason 
but.  We  will  believe  as  our  fathers  believed.'  Nor  was 
this  strange,  for  the  Bishops  present,  Knox  says,  '  spake 
nothing,'  Randolph  explaining  that  the  three  who  got  to 
their  feet,  headed  by  the  St  Andrew's  primate,  said  the 
doctrine  was  a  matter  new  and  strange  to  them,  which 
they  had  not  examined,  and  which  they  could  not 
'  utterly  condemn,'  or,  on  the  other  hand,  quite  consent 
to.  The  vote  on  the  side  of  the  majority  was  largely  a 
rejoicing  outburst  of  individual  conviction.  The  Earl 
Marischal  indeed,  took  the  obvious  ground  that 
'seeing  that  my  Lords  Bishops,  who  for  their  learning  can,  and 
for  that  zeal  they  should  bear  to  the  verity,  would  (as  I  suppose) 
gainsay  anything  that  directly  repugns  to  the  verity  of  God — seeing, 
I  say,  my  Lords  here  present  speak  nothing  in  the  contrary  of  the 
doctrine  proposed,  I  cannot  but  hold  it  to  be  the  very  truth  of  God, 
and  the  contrary  to  be  deceivable  doctrine.' 

The  rest  of  the  Lords,  says  Randolph,  with  common 
consent,  and  '  as  glad  a  will  as  ever  I  heard  men  speak,' 
allowed  the  same. 

'  Divers,  with  protestation  of  their  conscience  and  faith,  desired 
rather  presently  to  end  their  lives  than  ever  to  think  contrary  unto 
that  allov^^ed  there.  Many  also  offered  to  shed  their  blood  in  de- 
fence of  the  same.  The  old  Lord  of  Lindsay,  as  grave  and  goodly 
a  man  as  ever  I  saw,  said :  "  I  have  lived  many  years  ;  I  am  the 
oldest  in  this  company  of  my  sort ;  now  that  it  hath  pleased  God  to 
let  me  see  this  day,  where  so  many  nobles  and  others  have  allowed 
so  worthy  a  work,  I  will  say,  with  Simeon,  Ntmc  dimiUis.'*' 


94  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

It  was  the  birthday  of  a  people.  For  not  in  that 
assembly  alone,  and  within  the  dim  walls  of  the  old 
Parliament  House  of  Edinburgh,  was  that  faith  confessed 
and  those  vows  made.  Everywhere  the  Scottish  burgess 
and  the  Scottish  peasant  felt  himself  called  to  deal,  in- 
dividually and  immediately,  with  Christianity  and  the 
divine;  and  everywhere  the  contact  was  ennobling. 
*  Common  man '  as  he  was,  '  the  vague,  shoreless  universe 
had  become  for  him  a  firm  city,  and  a  dwelling-place 
which  he  knew.  Such  virtue  was  in  belief:  in  these 
words  well  spoken,  /  believe.''  *  But  being  a  common 
man  in  Scotland,  his  religion  could  not  be  isolated,  or 
his  faith  for  himself  alone.  Wherever  he  dwelt,  *  in  our 
towns  and  places  reformed,'  he  was  already  a  member  of 
a  self-governing  republic,  a  republic  within  the  Scottish 
State  but  not  of  it,  and  subject  to  an  invisible  King. 
'The  good  old  cause'  was  already  born.  It  kindled 
itself,  as  that  son  of  the  Burgher  mason  in  Annandale 
says  again,  *  like  a  beacon  set  on  high ;  high  as  heaven, 
yet  attainable  from  earth,  whereby  the  meanest  man 
becomes  not  a  citizen  only,  but  a  member  of  Christ's 
visible  Church;  a  veritable  hero,  if  he  prove  a  true 
man.' 

Day  by  day  at  this  critical  epoch  Knox  preached  in 
St  Giles  from  the  *  prophet  Haggeus,'  on  what  he  called 
The  Building  of  the  House.  In  one  sense  the  founda- 
tion was  laid  already.  In  another,  Parliament  might  be 
called  upon  to  supply  one.  What  foundation  was  Par- 
liament to  lay,  and  what  structure  was  promised  for  the 
days  to  come  ? 

*  Thomas  Carlyle. 


CHAPTER    V 

THE    PUBLIC    LIFE  :    LEGISLATION    AND    CHURCH    PLANS 

The  Confession  presented  to  the  Parliament  of  1560 
was  one  of  a  group  which  sprang  as  if  from  the  soil,  in 
almost  every  country  in  Europe.  They  had  all  a  strong 
family  likeness ;  but  not  because  one  imitated  the  other. 
They  were  honest  attempts  to  represent  the  impression 
made  on  the  mind  of  that  age  by  the  newly  discovered 
Scriptures,  and  that  impression — the  first  impression  at 
least — was  everywhere  the  same.  And  everywhere  it 
was  overwhelmingly  strong.  So  far  as  Knox  at  least 
is  concerned,  he  plainly  held  the  extreme  view,  not 
only  that  no  one  could  read  the  Scriptures  with- 
out finding  in  them  the  new  doctrine,  but  that — as 
he  quite  calmly  observed  on  one  memorable  occasion 
in  St  Giles — 'all  Papists  are  infidels,'  either  refusing 
to  consult  the  light,  or  denying  it  when  seen.  And,  of 
course,  nothing  was  more  calculated  to  confirm  this  view 
than  a  scene  like  that  which  we  have  just  described,  and 
which  had  been  recently  rehearsed  in  innumerable  cases 
in  Scotland  and  elsewhere.  But,  in  truth,  the  new  light 
dazzled  all  eyes.  Later  on,  men  had  to  analyse  it,  and 
they  found  there  were  distinctions  to  be  made  as  to  its 
value : — for  example,  between  truth  natural  and  truth 
revealed,  between  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New, 
between  the  truths  even  of  the  New  Testament  and  its 
sacraments — distinctions  which  some  among  themselves 
admitted,  and  which  others  refused.  The  very  last 
publication,  too,  of  Knox  in  1572  was  an  answer  to  a 

95 


96  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Scottish  Jesuit ;  for  by  that  time  a  counter-Reformation, 
which  also  was  not  without  its  convictions,  had  begun. 
But,  in  the  meantime,  the  energy  and  the  triumph  were 
all  on  one  side.  And  although  only  the  first  step  had 
been  taken,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  first  step  was, 
in  Scotland,  the  great  one.  With  the  really  Protestant 
party,  and,  of  course,  with  the  Puritans,  the  confession 
of  truth  was  fundamental.  Subsequent  arrangements 
as  to  the  State,  and  even  as  to  the  Church,  were 
subordinate — they  were,  at  the  best,  mere  corollaries 
from  the  central  doctrine  affecting  the  individual.  In 
every  case  truth  comes  first :  and  human  authority  a 
long  way  later  on.  In  this  transaction,  for  example,  of 
the  17th  August  1560,  nothing  is  clearer  than  that  the 
Parliament  did  not  adopt  the  doctrine  in  any  way  on 
the  authority  of  the  new-born  Church.  All  the  forms 
of  a  free  and  deliberate  voting  of  the  doctrine  as  truth 
— as  the  creed  of  the  estates,  not  of  the  Church,  were 
gone  through.  Still  less,  on  the  other  hand,  did  the 
Church  really  adopt  it  on  the  authority  of  the  Parlia- 
ment j  (though  it  must  be  confessed  that  this  expression 
of  it — the  written  creed  of  1560 — had  no  formal  sanc- 
tion other  than  that  of  the  State).  But  it  was  the  con- 
fession '  professed  by  the  Protestants,'  and  exhibited  by 
them  'to  the  estates;'  and  it  contained  in  itself  abundant 
and  adequate  foundation  for  that  independence  of  the 
Church  which  became  so  dear  to  Scotland  in  following 
ages,  and  of  which  Knox  himself  has  always  been  re- 
cognised as,  more  than  any  other  man,  the  historical 
embodiment. 

The  great  confession  in  this  creed  that  '  as  we  believe 
in  one  God — Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost — so  do  we 
most  constantly  believe  that  from  the  beginning  there  has 
been,  now  is,  and  to  the  end  of  the  world  shall  be,  one 
Kirk,'  is  there  so  deduced  from  the  everlasting  purpose 
and  revelations  of  God,  and  is  so  concentrated  upon 


JOHN  KNOX  97 

the  duty  and  the  privilege  of  the  individual  man,  that 
the  church  in  Scotland,  even  had  it  never  become 
national,  would  have  stood  square  and  perhaps  risen 
high  upon  this  one  foundation.  But  it  was  by  no  means 
intended  to  stand  on  that  foundation  alone,  however 
adequate.  And  it  was  with  a  view  to  further  steps — not 
all  of  them  taken  at  this  time — that  clauses  as  to  the 
civil  magistrate  were  introduced  in  the  penultimate 
chapter,  assigning  to  him  '  principally '  the  conservation 
and  purgation  of  the  religion — by  which,  it  is  carefully 
explained,  is  meant  not  only  the  '  maintenance '  of  the 
true  religion,  but  the  '  suppressing '  of  the  false.  One 
more  remark  may  be  made.  Theoretically,  the  Church 
could  improve  its  creed.  In  France  it  was  read  aloud 
on  the  first  day  of  each  yearly  Assembly,  that  amend- 
ments or  alterations  upon  it  might  be  proposed; 
and  in  Scotland  also  the  view  was  strongly  held  that 
the  only  standard  unchangeable  by  the  Church  was 
Scripture.  This  theoretical  view,  however,  was  not  to 
have  much  immediate  practical  result ;  especially  as  the 
Confession  was  now  ratified  by  the  Parliament.  And 
this  was  done  without  change  or  qualification,  though 
the  preface  prefixed  to  it  by  the  Churchmen  admits 
its  fallibility  and  invites  amendment — a  view  in  which 
Knox  had  long  since  been  encouraged  by  his  earliest 
teacher.* 

*  The  writers  of  the  Scottish  Confession  in  1560  protest  '  that  if 
any  man  will  note  in  this  our  Confession  any  article  or  sentence 
repugning  to  God's  holy  word,  that  it  would  please  him  of  his 
gentleness,  and  for  Christian  charity's  sake,  to  admonish  us  of  the 
same  in  write ;  and  we  of  our  honour  and  fidelity  do  promise  unto 
him  satisfaction  from  the  mouth  of  God  (that  is,  from  His  Holy 
Scriptures),  or  else  reformation  of  that  which  he  shall  prove  to  be 
amiss.' — '  Works, 'ii.  96. 

Wishart,  the  translator  in  or  before  1545  of  the  First  Helvetic 
Confession,  adds  to  it  this  similar  and  very  beautiful  declaration  : — 

*  It  is  not  our  mind  for  to  prescribe  by  these  brief  chapters  a 

4  <? 


98  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

The  congregation  had  confessed  the  doctrine  to  the 
ParHament,  and  the  ParHament  had  accepted  and  ap- 
proved it.     Had  the  Parliament  more  to  do  ? 

Some  things  were  absolutely  necessary.  It  had  to 
wipe  out  the  previous  legislation  against  the  profession 
of  the  new  faith.  The  Evangel  had  to  be  set  free  by 
statute.  Once  liberated  from  the  ban  of  the  law  under 
which  its  previous  victories  had  been  won,  it  could  finish 
its  work  independently,  and  without  difficulty  sweep  the 
whole  of  Scotland.  And  Knox  had  no  doubt  as  to  the 
right  of  the  Kirk  to  act  independently,  or  as  to  its 
duty  to  do  so — if  it  could  not  do  more  and  better. 
Already,  before  the  Parliament  met,  the  members  of  it 
who  were  Protestants  had  gathered  together  in  Edin- 
burgh, and  arranged  for  fixing  this  and  that  minister  of 
the  word  in  the  various  centres  of  population.  And 
once  the  legal  obstacles  to  proselytism  were  removed, 
the  way  would  be  open  for  a  more  glorious  advance  than 
they  had  yet  seen.  But  such  a  work  in  the  future, 
though  comparatively  easy,  and  though  in  Knox's  view 

certain  rule  of  the  faith  to  all  churches  and  congregations,  for  we 
know  no  other  rule  of  faith  but  the  Holy  Scripture  ;  and,  therefore, 
we  are  well  contented  with  them  that  agree  with  these  things, 
howbeit  they  use  another  manner  of  speaking  or  Confession, 
different  partly  to  this  of  ours  in  words;  for  rather  should  the 
matter  be  considered  than  the  words.  And  therefore  we  make  it 
free  for  all  men  to  use  their  own  sort  of  speaking,  as  they  shall  per- 
ceive most  profitable  for  their  churches,  and  we  shall  use  the  same 
liberty.  And  if  any  man  will  attempt  to  corrupt  the  true  meaning 
of  this  our  Confession,  he  shall  hear  both  a  confession  and  a  defence 
of  the  verity  and  truth.  It  was  our  pleasure  to  use  these  words  at 
this  present  time,  that  we  might  declare  our  opinion  in  our  religion 
and  worshipping  of  God.' — *  Miscellany  of  Wodrow  Society,'  i.  23. 
This  *  declaration '  is  not  in  the  original  Confession,  either  in 
Latin  or  German,  and  must  have  been  written,  probably  by  Wish- 
art  himself,  rather  for  the  English  readers  or  the  Scottish  churches 
for  whom  the  rest  was  translated.     It  is  a  remarkable  legacy. 


JOHN  KNOX  99 

certain  in  its  result,  would  be  slow.  Why  not  do  it  all 
at  a  stroke  ?  Instead  of  merely  revoking  the  intolerant 
laws,  why  not  turn  them  against  the  other  side  ? 

A  very  strong  petition  had  been  already  presented 
against  the  Romish  Church,  and  exactly  a  week  after 
the  ratification  of  the  Confession,  three  Acts  were 
passed.*  These  three  Acts,  with  that  ratification,  con- 
stituted the  public  *  state  of  religion '  during  the  seven 
years  of  Mary's  reign,  and  they  were  re-enacted  on  her 
abdication  in  1567  as  the  foundation  of  the  regime  of 
Protestantism.  Of  the  three,  the  first  was  only  ambigu- 
ously intolerant,  for  though  it  ordained  that  the  Pope 

*  have  no  jurisdiction  nor  authority  within  this  realm,' 
that  might  be  held  to  reject  mainly  the  Papal  encroach- 
ment upon  civil  power.  The  second  was  not  intolerant 
at  all,  and  as  being  well  within  the  power  and  duty  of  the 
nation,  it  ought  to  have  come  first.  By  it  all  Acts  bypast, 
and  especially  those  of  the  five  Jameses,  not  agreeing 
with  God's  Word  and  contrary  to  the  Confession,  and 

*  wherethrow  divers  innocents  did  suffer,'  were  abolished 
and  extinguished  for  ever.  But  the  third,  passed  the 
same  day,  proceeded  on  the  preamble  that  'notwith- 
standing the  reformation  already  made,  according  to 
God's  Word,  yet  there  is  some  of  the  said  Papist  Kirk 
that  stubbornly  persevere  in  their  wicked  idolatry  saying 
Mass  and  baptising.'  And  it  ordained,  against  not  only 
them  but  all  dissenters  and  outsiders  for  all  time,  *  that 
no  manner  of  person  in  any  time  coming  administer  any 
of  the  Sacraments  foresaid,  secretly  or  any  other  manner 
of  way,  but  they  that  are  admitted,  or  have  power  to 
that  effect.'  And  lastly,  with  regard  to  the  large 
minority  (if,  indeed,  it  was  not  a  clear  majority)  of  the 
nation  who  still  ciung  to  their  ordinary  worship,  it  pro- 
vided that  no  one  '  shall  say  Mass,  nor  yet  hear  Mass, 
nor  be  present  thereat,'  under  the  pains,  for  the  first 

*  As  now  in  the  Statute  Book,  1567,  chaps.  2,  3,  and  5. 


loo  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

fault,  of  confiscation  of  goods  and  bodily  punishment, 
for  the  second,  of  banishment,  and  for  the  third,  of 
death. 

This  has  always  remained  .the  fundamental  positive 
ordinance  among  the  statutes  of  the  Reformation;  though 
it  may  be  fair  to  take  along  with  it  the  first  of  these 
three  Acts,  and  especially  a  positive  clause  in  it  which 
forbids  bishops  to  exercise  jurisdiction  by  Papal  au- 
thority. No  farther  establishment  of  the  Church  was  at 
the  time  attempted  ;  and  there  was  indeed  no  farther 
legislation  till  Mary's  downfall  in  1567.  In  that  year 
the  three  Acts  of  1560  were  anew  passed;  and  they 
were  followed  by  the  formal  statement  (more  or  less 
implied  even  in  the  legislation  of  1560)  that  the 
ministers  and  people  professing  Christ  according  to 
the  Evangel  and  the  Reformed  Sacraments  and  Con- 
fession are  '  the  only  true  and  holy  Kirk  of  Jesus  Christ 
within  this  realm.'  An  Act  followed  by  which  each 
king  at  his  coronation  was  to  take  an  oath  to  main- 
tain this  religion,  and  also,  explicitly,  to  root  out  all 
heretics  and  enemies  '  to  the  true  worship  of  God  that 
shall  be  convict  by  the  true  Kirk  of  God.'  It  seems 
difficult  for  statutory  religion  to  go  farther :  but  the 
solid  system  and  block  of  intolerance  was  completed  by 
a  group  of  statutes  in  1572,  the  year  of  Knox's  death. 
They  ordain  that  Papists  and  others  not  joining  in 
the  Reformed  worship  shall  after  warning  be  excom- 
municated by  the  Church  (of  which  a  previous  Act, 
somewhat  inconsistently,  had  declared  them  not  to  be 
at  all  members) ;  and  that  *  none  shall  be  reputed  as 
loyal  and  faithful  subjects  to  our  sovereign  Lord  or  his 
authority,  but  be  punishable  as  rebels  and  gain-standers 
of  the  same,  who  shall  not  give  their  confession,  and 
make  their  profession  of  the  said  true  religion.' 

Scotland  had  taken  the  wrong  legislative  turning. 
The  only  defence  of  these  statutes,  and  it  is  a  very  in- 


JOHN  KKOX  101 

adequate  one,  is  that  they  could  not  be  fully  enforced  and 
were  not,  and  that  perhaps  they  were  not  quite  intended 
to  be  enforced.  In  point  of  fact  Scotland  in  the  Refor- 
mation time  had  little  blood-shedding  for  mere  religion 
on  either  side  to  shew,  compared  to  the  deluge  which 
stained  the  scaffolds  of  continental  Europe.  That  is  no 
answer  to  the  criticism  that  the  only  law  now  needed 
was  one  to  '  abolish  and  extinguish '  the  persecuting 
laws  which  had  been  enacted  of  old.  But  even  to  such 
a  critic,  and  on  the  ground  of  theory,  there  is  something 
to  be  said.  It  is  not  true  that  the  new  theory  was  worse 
than  the  old.  On  the  contrary,  the  old  theory  allowed 
no  private  judgment  to  the  individual  at  all;  he  was 
bound  by  the  authority  of  the  Church,  and  it  was  no 
comfort  to  him  to  know  that  the  state  was  bound  by  it 
too.  On  the  Protestant  theory  neither  the  individual 
nor  the  state  were  in  the  first  instance  so  bound ;  both 
were  free  to  find  and  utter  the  truth,  free  for  the  first 
time  for  a  thousand  years  !  It  was  this  feeling — that 
the  state  was  free  truthwards  and  Godwards — which  ac- 
counted for  half  of  the  enthusiasm  in  the  Scots  Parlia- 
ment a  week  before.  And  it  was  not  at  once  perceived, 
there  or  elsewhere,  that  for  the  state  to  make  use  of  this 
freedom  by  embracing  a  creed  itself — even  though  it 
now  embraced  it  as  the  true  creed  and  no  longer  as  the 
Church's  creed — was  perilous  for  the  more  fundamental 
freedom  of  the  individual  He  would  be  sure  to  feel 
aggrieved  by  his  state  adopting  the  creed  which  was  not 
his.  And  the  state  might  readily  be  led  into  holding 
that  it  had  adopted  it  not  for  its  ofiicials  only  but  for 
its  subjects,  and  might  shape  its  legislation  accordingly. 
Knox  was  more  responsible  for  the  result  than  any 
other  man,  and  for  him  also  there  is  something  to  be 
said.  The  view  that  the  state  must  adopt  a  religion  for 
all  its  subjects  and  compel  them  all  to  be  members  of 
its   Church,   was   common  ground  in   that   age;    both 


I02  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

parties  proclaimed  it  (except  when  they  were  in  too 
hopeless  a  minority),  and  the  few  Anabaptists  and  others 
who  anticipated  the  doctrine  of  modern  times  had  not 
been  able  to  get  it  into  practical  politics.  Knox  too,  in 
his  first  contact  with  the  Reformed  faith  (and  the  con- 
tact, as  we  know,  was  a  plunge),  had  found  the  tenet  of 
the  magistrate's  duty  in  an  exaggerated  form.  And  in 
that  form  he  now  reproduced  it.  The  statement  of  his 
Confession  of  1560  that  *To  Kings,  Princes,  Rulers, 
and  Magistrates  we  affirm  that  chiefly  and  most  prin- 
cipally the  conservation  and  purgation  of  the  Religion 
appertains,'  is  not  at  all  stronger  than  that  in  the  First 
Confession  of  Helvetia  which  Wishart  had  brought  with 
him  before  1545.  Switzerland,  taught  by  bitter  ex- 
perience, exchanged  it  for  a  milder  statement  in  its 
Second  Confession  of  1566.*  But  Calvin  and  Beza  and 
Knox's  friends  in  the  French  Protestant  Church  generally 
had  held  to  the  stronger  view  of  the  magistrate's  duty, 
even  amid  all  his  persecutions  of  them;  and  Knox's 
passionate  indignation  against   idolatry  had   led   him, 

*  It  may  be  interesting  to  read  the  statement  of  the  First  Helvetic 
in  Wishart's  translation  (though  this  is  one  of  the  paragraphs  in 
which  that  translation  mangles  the  Latin  and  German  originals). 
It  is  given  in  the  '  Miscellany  of  the  Wodrow  Society,'  i.  21 : 

*  Seeing  every  magistrate  and  high  power  is  of  God,  his  chief 
and  principal  office  is  (except  he  would  rather  use  tyranny)  to  defend 
the  true  worshipping  of  God  from  all  blasphemy,  and  to  procure 
true  religion  .  .  .  then  after  io  judge  the  people  by  equal  and  godly 
laws  to  exercise  and  maintain  judgment  and  justice,  &c.'  (Sec.  26)  ; 
and  (Sec.  24),  *  They  that  bring  in  ungodly  sects  and  opinions 
.  .  .  should  be  constrained  and  punished  by  the  magistrates  and 
high  powers.' 

The  Second  Helvetic  Confession  of  1566  rather  inverts  the  order 
put  by  the  First.  '  The  magistrate's  principal  office  is  to  procure 
and  preserve  peace  and  public  tranquillity.  And  he  never  can  do 
this  more  happily '  than  by  promoting  religion,  extirpating  idolatry, 
and  defending  the  Church.  .  .  .  For  'the  care  of  religion  be- 
longs,' not  to  the  magistrate  simply,  but  'to  the  pious  magistrate.' 


JOHN  KNOX  103 

even  in  his  early  English  career,  to  maintain  the  duty 
not  only  of  the  magistrate,  but  even  of  the  subject  in  so 
far  as  he  had  power,  to  punish  it  with  death.  Indeed 
his  only  chance  of  escaping  from  the  vicious  circle  of 
that  murderous  syllogism  *  was  by  going  back  to  the 
right  of  the  individual  to  stand  against  the  magistrate, 
and  if  need  be  to  combine  against  him,  in  defence  of 
truth.  On  this  side  even  that  early  Helvetic  Confession 
had  proclaimed  (in  Wishart's  words  but  in  Knox's  spirit), 
that  subjects  should  obey  the  magistrate  only  *  so  long 
as  his  commandments,  statutes,  and  empires,  evidently 
repugn  not  with  Him  for  whose  sake  we  honour  and 
worship  the  magistrate.'  And  Knox  in  later  years  had 
travelled  so  far  on  the  road  of  modern  constitutionalism 
as  to  maintain  the  right  of  subjects  to  combine  against 
and  overthrow  the  ruler  whose  intolerant  statutes  so 
repugned.  How  far  he  had  exactly  gone  would  have 
appeared  had  the  chapter  'of  the  obedience  or  dis- 
obedience that  subjects  owe  unto  their  magistrates' 
appeared  in  the  Scottish  Confession  unrevised.  Ran- 
dolph says  that  the  '  author  of  this  work '  was  advised 
by  Lethington  and  Winram  to  leave  it  out.  Something, 
if  not  a  whole  chapter,  has  been  left  out ;  and  the  con- 
sequence is  that  the  first  Confession  of  the  Scottish 
Church  and  people  is  very  much  overweighted  on  the 
side  of  absolute  power.  But  had  that  chapter  gone  in, 
it  would  have  been  difficult  not  to  have  recognised  even 
then,  that  there  was  an  inconsistency  between  the 
alleged  high  function  of  the  magistrate  as  to  religion, 
and  the  disobedience  which  on  that  head  his  subjects 
may  '  owe  unto  him ' — an  inconsistency  even  in  theory. 
The  inconsistency  in  practice  Providence  was  to  make 
its  early  care. 

It  had  been  necessary  for  Parliament  to  revoke  its 
*  See  page  67  and  note. 


I04  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

old  persecuting  statutes.  And  on  that  side  it  had  gone 
farther,  proscribing  the  old  religion  and  Church,  and 
setting  up,  if  not  a  new  church,  at  least  a  new  religion. 
But,  on  another  side,  and  one  with  which  Parliament 
alone  could  deal,  there  was  also  something  necessary. 
What  was  to  be  done  with  the  huge  endowments  of  the 
Church  now  abolished  and  proscribed  ?  And  what  pro- 
vision was  to  be  made  by  the  State  for  that  '  main- 
tenance of  the  true  religion'  to  which  it  had  bound 
itself,  and  for  its  spread  among  a  people,  half  of  whom 
were  not  even  acquainted  with  it,  though  all  of  them 
were  already  bound  to  it  by  law  ? 

The  question  of  the  endowments  was  a  more  difficult 
one,  theoretically  and  practically,  than  that  of  the  yearly 
tithes.  For  the  former  had  been  actual  gifts,  made  to 
the  Church  or  its  officials  by  kings,  barons,  and  other 
individuals,  when  there  was  no  law  compelling  them 
to  give  them.  What  right  had  the  State  now  to 
touch  these?  Two  things  are  to  be  recalled  before 
answer.  All  these  individual  donors  had  been  by  law 
compelled  not  only  to  be  members  of  that  Church,  but 
to  accept  it  (whether  they  wished  to  do  so  or  not)  as  the 
exclusive  receiver  of  whatever  charities  they  might  desire 
to  institute  or  to  bequeath.  For  many  centuries  past  in 
Scotland  the  proposal  to  do  otherwise  would  have  been 
not  only  futile,  but  a  deadly  risk  to  him  who  tried  it. 
Then,  secondly,  the  same  law  which  had  bound  the 
individual  to  the  Church  as  the  exclusive  administrator 
of  charities,  had  kept  him  in  compulsory  ignorance  of 
other  objects  of  munificence  than  those  which  the 
Church  sanctioned;  or  if  by  chance  that  pious  ignorance 
was  broken,  it  sternly  forbade  him  to  support  them. 
For  reasons  such  as  these  the  modern  European  state 
has  never  been  able  to  treat  ancient  endowments  made 
under  the  pressure  of  its  own  intolerance  with  the  same 
respect  as  if  the  donors  had  been  really  free — free  to 


JOHN  KNOX  105 

know,  and  free  to  act.  The  presumption  that  the  donor 
or  testator,  if  he  were  living  now,  would  have  acted  far 
otherwise  than  he  did,  and  that  in  altering  his  destina- 
tion the  State  may  be  carrying  out  what  he  really  would 
have  wished,  is  in  such  cases  by  no  means  without 
foundation.  Knox  and  others  reveal  to  us  that  this 
feeling  was  overwhelmingly  strong  at  the  time  with 
which  we  are  dealing,  especially  in  the  minds  of  the 
descendants  and  representatives  of  the  donors  them- 
selves. And  in  the  minds  of  the  common  people,  and 
of  Knox  as  one  sprung  from  them,  there  was  lying, 
unexpressed,  the  feeling  which  in  modern  times  has 
been  expressed  so  loudly,  that  the  claim  of  the  individual, 
whether  superior  or  sovereign,  to  alienate  for  unworthy 
uses  huge  tracts  of  territory  which  carry  along  with 
them  the  lives  and  labours  of  masses  of  men — and  of 
men  who  have  never  consented  to  it — is  a  claim  doubt- 
ful in  its  origin  and  pernicious  in  its  results.  All  over 
Protestant  Europe  the  conclusion  even  of  the  wise  and 
just  was,  that,  subject  to  proper  qualifications,  the  ancient 
endowments  of  the  Church  were  now  the  treasury  of  the 
people. 

But  there  was  another  part  of  the  patrimony  of  the 
old  Church  on  which  Knox  had  a  still  stronger  opinion 
— viz.,  the  yearly  tithes  or  Teinds.  To  these,  in  his 
view,  that  Church  and  its  ministers  had  neither  the 
divine  right  which  they  had  claimed,  nor  any  right  at 
all.  The  '  commandment '  of  the  State  indeed  had 
compelled  men,  often  cruelly  and  unjustly,  to  pay  them 
to  the  Church.  But  the  State  was  now  free  to  dispose 
of  them  better,  and  it  was  bound  to  dispose  of  them 
justly.  And  in  so  far  as  they  should  still  be  exacted  at 
all,  they  must  now  be  devoted  to  the  most  useful  and 
the  most  charitable  purposes — purposes  which  should 
certainly  include  the  support  of  the  ministry,  but  should 
include  many  other  things  too.     One  of  the  positions 


io6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

taken  up  by  Knox  in  his  very  first  sennon  in  St  Andrews 
(following  the  views  which  he  reports  as  held  by  the 
Lollards  of  Kyle),  was,  'The  teinds  by  God's  law  do  not 
appertain  of  necessity  to  the  Kirkmen.'  *  And  now  the 
Book  of  Discipline,  under  its  head  of  The  Rents  and 
Patrimony  of  the  Kirk,'  demanded  that 

'  Two  sorts  of  men,  that  is  to  say,  the  ministers  and  the  poor, 
together  with  the  schools,  when  order  shall  be  taken  thereanent, 
must  be  sustained  upon  the  charges  of  the  church, '  f 

And  again — 

*  0/  the  teinds  must  not  only  the  ministers  be  sustained,  but  also 
the  poor  and  schools.* 

The  kirk  was  now  powerful,  and  the  poor  and  the 
schools  were  weak;  and  Knox  now  as  ever  put  forward 
the  strong  to  champion  those  who  could  not  help  them- 
selves. But  he  had  long  before  come  to  the  conclusion,  % 
that  of  the  classes  here  co-ordinated  as  having  a  right 
to  the  teinds,  it  was  the  right  of  the  poor  that  was 
fundamental,  and  the  claim  of  the  ministers  was 
secondary  or  ancillary,  and  perhaps  only  to  be  sustained 
in  so  far  as  they  preached  and  distributed  to  the  poor,  or 

*  'Works,'  i.  8,  194.  f  'Works,'  ii.  221,  222. 

X  Knox's  opinion  was  asked  upon  the  point  in  or  before  1556, 
and  he  anwered  ('Works,'  iv.  127),  'Touching  Tithes,  by  the  law 
of  God  they  appertain  to  no  priest,  for  now  we  have  no  levitical  priest- 
hood ;  but  by  law,  positive  gift,  custom,  they  appertain  to  princes, 
and  by  their  commandment  to  "men  of  kirk,"  as  they  would  be 
termed.  In  their  first  donation  respect  was  had  to  another  end,  as 
their  own  law  doth  witness,  than  now  is  observed.  For  first,  respect 
was  had  that  such  as  were  accounted  distributors  of  those  things 
that  were  given  to  churchmen,  should  have  their  reasonable  sustenta- 
tion  of  the  same,  making  just  account  of  the  rest,  how  it  was  to  be 
bestowed  upon  the  poor,  the  stranger,  the  widow,  the  fatherless,  for 
whose  relief,  all  such  7'ents  and  duties  were  chiefly  appointed  to  the 
church.  Secondly,  that  provision  should  be  made  for  the  ministers 
of  the  church,  &c.' 


JOHN  KNOX  to7 

possibly  only  in  so  far  as  they  were  of,  and  represented, 
the  poor.  Accordingly  the  Assembly  of  1562,  in  a 
Supplication,  no  doubt  written  by  Knox,  and  certainly 
breathing  what  had  been  his  spirit  ever  since  the  early 
days  of  Wishart,  conjoins  the  cause  of  both  in  passionate 
eloquence : 

'  The  Poor  be  of  three  sorts  :  the  poor  labourers  of  the  ground  ; 
the  poor  desolate  beggars,  orphans,  widows,  and  strangers ;  and 
the  poor  ministers  of  Christ  Jesus  His  holy  Evangel  :  which  are  all 
so  cruelly  treated.  .  .  .  For  now  the  poor  labourers  of  the  ground 
are  so  oppressed  by  the  cruelty  of  those  that  pay  their  Third,  that 
they  for  the  most  part  advance  upon  the  poor  whatsoever  they  pay 
to  the  Queen  or  to  any  other.  As  for  the  very  indigent  and  poor, 
to  whom  God  commands  a  sustentation  to  be  provided  of  the  Teinds^ 
they  are  so  despised  that  it  is  a  wonder  that  the  sun  giveth  light 
and  heat  to  the  earth  where  God's  name  is  so  frequently  called  upon, 
and  no  mercy,  according  to  His  commandment,  shown  to  His 
creatures.  And  also  for  the  ministers,  their  livings  are  so  appointed, 
that  the  most  part  shall  live  but  a  beggar's  life.  And  all  cometh  of 
that  impiety — '  * 

The  position  that  the  *  patrimony  of  the  Church '  is 
fundamentally  rather  the  *  patrimony  of  the  poor,'  and 
that  ecclesiastics  are  merely  its  distributors,  was  any- 
thing but   new.     It   is   a  commonplace  f    among   the 

*  *  Works,'  ii.  340. 

t  Thomassin,  a  very  great  authority,  devotes  no  fewer  than  eight 
chapters  of  his  third  folio  De  Beneficiis  to  proving  from  Councils 
and  the  Fathers  that  '  Res  Ecclesiae,  res  et  patrimonia  sunt  pau- 
perum.  Earum  beneficiarii  non  domini  sunt  sed  dispensatores.' 
After  voluminous  evidence  from  all  the  centuries,  he  holds  it  super- 
fluously plain  that  all  beneficed  men  are  'mere  dispensers  and 
administrators,  not  proprietors  nor  even  possessors,  of  vi^hat  is  truly 
the  patrimony  of  the  poor,'  and  what  is  held  as  trustee  for  the 
indigent  by  Christ  Himself ;  so  much  so,  that  when  this  property  of 
the  poor  is  diverted  to  support  a  bishop  or  other  dignitary,  he  is  not 
entitled  to  enjoy  his  house,  table,  or  garments,  unless  these  have  a 
certain  suggestion  and  savour  of  destitution — necesse  est paupertatis 


io8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

learned  of  the  Catholic  Church — the  difference  was  that 
at  this  crisis  it  was  possible  for  Scotland  to  act  upon  it, 
and  that  the  state  was  urged  to  remember  the  poor 
by  a  man  who,  with  all  his  devotion  to  God  and  to 
the  other  world,  burned  with  compassion  for  the  hard 
wrought  labourers  of  his  people.  For  it  will  be  observed 
that  here,  as  elsewhere,  Knox  is  concerned,  not  only  for 
the  'very  indigent,'  and  the  technically  *  poor,'*  but  for 
those  especially  whom  he  calls  '  your  poor  brethren,  the 
labourers  and  manurers  (hand-workers)  of  the  ground.' 
In  the  Book  of  DiscipHne,  before  entering  upon  its  pro- 
visions for  dividing  the  tithe  between  the  ministers,  the 
poor,  and  the  schools,  he  urges  that  the  labourers  must 
be  allowed  '  to  pay  so  reasonable  teinds,  that  they  may 
feel  some  benefit  of  Christ  Jesus,  now  preached  unto 
them.'     For 

'  With  the  grief  of  our  hearts  we  hear  that  some  gentlemen  are 
now  as  cruel  over  their  tenants  as  ever  were  the  Papists,  requiring 
of  them  whatever  before  they  paid  to  the  Church,  so  that  the 
Papistical  tyranny  shall  only  be  changed  into  the  tyranny  of  the 
lord  or  of  the  laird.'  .  .  .  But  'the  gentlemen,  barons,  earls, 
lords,  and  others,  must  be  content  to  live  upon  their  just  rents,  and 
suffer  the  Church  to  be  restored  to  her  liberty,  that  in  her  restitu- 
tion, the  poor,  who  heretofore  by  the  cruel  Papists  have  been  spoiled 
and  oppressed,  may  now  receive  some  comfort  and  relaxation.' 

For  Knox  had  now  fully  conceived  that  magnificent 

odore  aliquo  perfundi.  Thomassin,  of  course,  holds  that  the 
Church  has  a  divine  right  to  tithes ;  but  it  is  a  divine  right  to  ad- 
minister, not  to  enjoy,  them.  Knox  and  the  Reformers  denied 
the  divine  right  even  to  administer  :  they  urged  that  the  State 
should  make  the  Kirk  its  administrators. 

*  For  them  too,  and  even  for  the  strong  and  sturdy  and  the  Jolly 
Beggars  among  them,  he  had  a  certain  fellow-feeling;  as  is  wit- 
nessed by  the  zest  with  which  he  records  their  '  Warning  '  (p.  82). 
The  one  point,  indeed,  at  which  Knox  and  Burns  come  together 
is  '  A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that ! ' 


JOHN  KNOX  109 

scheme  of  statesmanship  for  Scotland,  which  is  preserved 
for  us  in  his  book  of  Disciphne,  presented,  after  the 
Confession,  to  the  Estates  of  Scotland  in  1560.*  How 
long  this  project  may  have  been  in  incubation  in  his 
mind,  we  do  not  know.  But  the  germ  of  it  may  have 
been  very  early  indeed.  It  may  have  come  into  ex- 
istence simultaneously  with  his  earliest  hope  for  the 
*  liberty '  and  '  restitution '  of  the  oppressed  and  cap- 
tive kirk.  For  I  shall  now  for  the  last  time  quote  a 
passage  from  that  early  Swiss  Confession  which  his 
master  Wishart  had  brought  over  with  him  to  Scotland 
so  long  ago  ;  a  passage  which  in  its  bold  comprehen- 
siveness may  well  have  been  the  original  even  in  his 
(Knox's)  early  East  Lothian  days,  of  his  later  '  devout 
imagination.'  The  Church,  said  the  Swiss  Reformers, 
as  translated  by  the  Scot  (and  translated,  as  there  is 
high  authority  for  believing,!  for  the  express  purpose  of 
founding  a  Protestant  Church  in  Scotland — or  at  least 
in  those  burghs  of  Scotland  which  had  received  his 
teaching),  is  entitled  to  call  upon  the  magistrate  for 

'  A  right  and  diligent  institution  of  the  discipline  of  citizens,  and 
of  the  schools  a  just  correction  and  nurture,  with  liberality  to- 
wards the  ministers  of  the  Church,  with  a  solicitate  and  thoughtful 
charge  of  the  poor,  to  which  end  all  the  riches  of  the  Church  [in 
German,  die  Giiter  der  Kirche\  is  referred. '  % 

*  <  Works,'  ii.  183  to  260. 

t  I  am  indebted  for  this  view  to  Dr.  A.  F.  Mitchell,  Emeritus 
Professor  of  Church  History  in  St  Andrews,  to  whom  all  are 
indebted  who  are  interested  in  the  historical  learning  of  either  the 
Reformation  or  the  Covenant. 

%  The  *  end  '  to  which  or  for  which  all  the  Church  patrimony 
is  here  said  to  be  given,  does  not  seem  to  be  merely  the  '  charge 
of  the  poor ' ;  though  Protestants  as  well  as  Catholics  often  urge 
that  as  fundamentally  true.  It  seems  to  be  rather  the  whole  group 
of  good  objects  which  are  gathered  together.  The  Latin  and 
German  originals  must  be  consulted. 


no  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Knox's  *  Book '  and  scheme  are  an  expansion  of  this 
one  sentence.  It  was  statesmanship  in  the  fullest  sense, 
including  a  poor-law  and  a  system  of  education,  higher 
and  elementary,  for  the  whole  country.  But  it  was  in 
the  first  place  a  Book  of  the  Church.  And  while  its 
*  system  of  national  education  was  realised  only  in  its 
most  imperfect  fashion,  its  system  of  religious  instruction 
was  carried  into  effect  with  results  that  would  alone 
stamp  the  First  Book  of  Discipline  as  the  most  im- 
portant document  in  Scottish  history '  (Hume  Brown). 
Even  on  the  Church  side  it  is  somewhat  too  despotic. 
The  power  of  discipline  and  of  exclusion  which  is 
necessary  to  every  self-governing  society  was  rightly 
preserved.  But  in  its  apphcation  it  tended  here,  as 
in  Geneva,  to  press  too  much  upon  the  detail  of  in- 
dividual life.  So,  too,  the  prominence  now  given  to 
preaching,  and  the  duty  laid  down  of  habitually  waiting 
upon  it,  may  seem  inconsistent  with  the  primitive  Pro- 
testant authority  of  the  Word  of  God  alone.  This, 
however,  would  have  been  modified,  had  the  system 
of  'weekly  prophesyings '  (which  provided  for  not  one 
man  only  but  for  all  who  are  qualified  communicating 
their  views),  taken  root  in  Scotland,  as  it  has  so  largely 
done  in  Wales.  And  even  as  it  was,  this  work  of  a 
trained  ministry,  and  especially  the  preaching,  passed 
in  those  early  days  like  a  ploughshare  through  the  whole 
soil  and  substance  of  the  Scottish  character,  and  left 
enduring  and  admirable  results. 

Had  Knox  been  able  to  throw  himself  directly  upon 
the  people,  all  would  have  been  well.  But  the  people 
were  to  be  approached  through  hereditary  rulers,  whose 
consent  was  necessary  for  funds  with  which  the  Church 
might  administer,  not  the  department  of  religion  and 
worship  only,  but  those  also  of  national  education  and 
national  charity.  That  the  Church  should  be  adminis- 
trator  was   not   the   difficulty.     Whether,   indeed,   the 


JOHN  KNOX  III 

selection  of  one  religion,  to  be  by  ordinance  of  Parlia- 
ment the  religion  of  the  subjects  of  the  State,  was 
justifiable,  will  always  be  gravely  questioned.  But, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  that  had  already  been  done  ;  and  it 
was  clearly  fitting  that  the  body  which  was  thus  in  a 
sense  made  co-extensive  with  the  nation,  should  under- 
take national  duties,  of  a  kind  cognate  with  those  pro- 
perly its  own.  No  one — except  perhaps  the  Catholics 
— doubted  that  the  new  Church,  with  both  the  new 
learning  and  the  new  enthusiasm  behind  it,  was  better 
fitted  to  administer  alike  education  and  charity  than 
either  the  Estates  or  the  Crown.  And  Knox's  great 
scheme  proposed  that  the  Church,  in  addition  to  ad- 
ministering its  own  religion  and  worship,  should  in 
every  parish  provide — i.  That  those  not  able  to  work 
should  be  supported ;  2.  that  those  who  were  able 
should  be  compelled  to  work;  3.  that  every  child 
should  have  a  public  school  provided  for  it ;  4.  that 
every  youth  of  promise  should  have  an  open  way 
through  a  system  of  public  schools  on  to  the  Univer- 
sities. It  was  a  great  plan,  but  a  perfectly  reasonable 
one.  And  there  was  abundance  of  money  for  it.  For 
the  wealth  of  the  Church  now  abolished,  which  the  law 
held  to  be,  at  least  after  the  death  of  the  existing  life- 
renters,  at  the  disposal  of  the  Crown,*  and  which  was 
indeed  afterwards  transferred  to  it  by  statute, "f*  is  gener- 
ally calculated  to  have  amounted  to  nearly  one  half  of 
the  whole  wealth  of  the  country.  But  the  crowning  sin 
of  the  old  hierarchy  had  been  that  on  the  approach  of 
the  Reformation  they  commenced,  in  the  teeth  of  their 
own  canons,  to  alienate  the  temporalities  which  they 
had  held  only  in  trust,  to  the  lords  and  lairds  around 
them  as  private  holders.  And  the  process  of  waste  thus 
initiated  by  the  Church  and  the  nobles  was  continued  by 

*  Stair's  *  Institutions,'  ii.  3,  36.    Erskine's  '  Institutes,'  ii.  10,  19. 
t  1587,  c.  29. 


112  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  Crown  and  its  favourites ;  the  result  being  that  the 
aristocracy  so  enriched  became  a  body  with  personal 
interests  hostile  to  the  people  and  their  new  Church. 
Even  in  the  first  flush  of  the  Reformation  all  that  the 
Reformers  could  procure  was  an  immediate  *  assump- 
tion '  by  the  Crown  of  one-third  of  the  benefices.  And 
even  of  this  one-third,  only  a  part  was  to  go  to  the 
Church,  the  rest  being  divided  between  the  old  pos- 
sessors and  the  Crown ;  or,  as  Knox  pithily  put  it,  '  two 
parts  are  freely  given  to  the  devil,  and  the  third  must  be 
divided  between  God  and  the  devil.'  Even  God's  pant, 
however,  was  scandalously  ill-paid  during  Mary's  reign, 
and  in  addition  the  Church  objected  to  receiving  by 
way  of  gift  from  the  Crown  what  they  should  have 
received  rather  as  due  from  the  parishes  and  the  people. 
This  came  out  very  instructively  in  the  Assembly  of 
December  1566.  The  Queen  was  now  courting  the 
Protestants,  and  had  signed  an  offer  for  a  considerable 
sum  for  the  maintenance  of  the  ministers.  What  was 
to  be  said  to  her  offer  ?  The  Assembly  first  requested 
the  opinion  of  Knox  and  the  other  ministers,  as  the 
persons  concerned.  They  retired  for  conference,  and 
'  very  gravely  '  answered — 

'  That  it  was  their  duty  to  preach  to  the  people  the  Word  of  God 
truly  and  sincerely,  and  to  crave  of  the  auditors  the  things  that 
were  necessary  for  their  sustentation,  as  of  duty  the  pastors  might 
justly  crave  of  their  flock.'  * 

This  Striking  reversion  to  the  Apostolic  rule — all  the 
more  striking  because  it  is  easily  reconcilable  with  the 
now  accepted  doctrine  of  toleration — was,  no  doubt,  not 
only  in  substance  but  in  form  the  utterance  of  Knox. 
But  so  also,  if  we  are  to  judge  by  internal  evidence,  was 
the  formal  answer  of  the  Assembly.  They  accepted  the 
Queen's  gift  under  the  pressure  of  present  necessity, 
but 

*  '  Works,'  ii.  538. 


JOHN  KNOX  iii 

'  Not  the  less,  in  consideration  [of]  the  law  of  God  ordains  the 
persons  who  hear  the  doctrine  of  salvation  at  the  mouths  of  his 
ministers,  and  thereby  receive  special  food  to  the  nourishment  of 
their  souls,  to  communicate  temporal  sustentation  on  [to]  their 
preachers  :  Their  answer  is,  That  having  just  title  to  crave  the 
bodily  food  at  the  hands  of  the  said  persons,  and  finding  no  others 
bound  unto  them,  they  only  require  at  their  own  flock,  that  they 
will  sustain  them  according  to  their  bounden  duty,  and  what  it  shall 
please  them  to  give  for  their  sustentation,  if  it  were  but  bread  and 
water,  neither  will  they  refuse  it,  nor  desist  from  the  vocation. 
But  to  take  from  others  contrary  to  their  will,  whom  they  serve 
not,  they  judge  it  not  their  duty,  nor  yet  reasonable.'  * 

The  principle  so  admirably  laid  down  by  Knox  has 
become  the  principle  of  modern  Presbyterianism  through- 
out the  world.  And  even  in  that  day  it  required  nothing 
to  be  added  to  it  except  the  recognition  that  Catholics, 
and  others  outside  the  '  flock,'  who  were  merely  statutory 
'  auditors,'  were  not  bound  to  its  pastor  in  the  tithe,  or 
other  proportion,  of  their  means.  Elementary  as  this 
may  now  seem,  it  was  of  course  too  much  for  that  age. 
The  same  Assembly  went  on  to  declare  that  '  the  teinds 
properly  pertain  to  the  Kirk,'  and  while  they  should  be 
applied  not  only  to  the  ministers,  but  also  to  'the  sus- 
tentation of  the  poor,  maintaining  of  schools,  repairing 
of  kirks,  and  other  godly  uses,'  such  application  should 
be  '  at  the  discretion  of  the  Kirk.'  It  was  all  right, 
provided  the  intolerant  establishment  were  to  remain. 
For  in  that  case  the  tithes  as  a  State  tax  were  the 
proper  means  for  the  State  maintaining  church  and 
school  and  poor ;  and  as  the  Church  had  already  been 
set  by  the  State  over  both  poor  and  school,  it  was  the 
fit  administrator  of  all.  And  all  this  ascendancy  was 
about  to  be  renewed ;  for  two  months  after  this  Assembly 
Bothwell  murdered   Darnley,   and  three   months   later 

*  '  Book  of  the  Universall  Kirk  of  Scotland,'  p.  46.     The  signifi- 
cance of  this  utterance  was  long  ago  pointed  out  by  the  Rev.  J.  C. 
Macphail,  D.D.,  of  Pilrig  Ghurch,  Edinburgh. 
4  H 


114  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Mary  married  Bothwell  and  abdicated.  And  the  great 
Parliamentary  settlement  of  1567  commenced  with  the 
long  delayed  ratification  of  the  three  old  statutes  of  1560; 
two  Acts  being  now  added,  one  declaring  that  the  Re- 
formed Church  is  the  only  Church  within  the  realm,  the 
other  giving  it  jurisdiction  over  Catholics  and  all 
others.  It  was  fit  that  between  these  two  later  Acts 
should  be  interposed  another,*  giving  the  ministers  a 
first  claim  on  the  '  thirds  '  of  benefices,  '  aye  and  until 
the  Kirk  come  to  the  full  possession  of  their  proper 
patrimony,  which  is  the  teinds.'  The  proper  patrimony 
of  the  ancient  Church  was,  perhaps,  rather  the  endow- 
ments which  had  been  gifted  to  it;  yet  Knox,  who 
abhorred  the  idea  of  inheriting  anything  from  that  old 
Church,  took  a  share  of  that  money,  even  from  the 
State,  with  reluctance.  But  the  tithes,  to  be  enforced 
yearly  from  Scotsmen  by  the  law,  he  claimed  freely,  for 
they  were  due  to  the  poor,  were  due  to  learning  and  the 
school,  and  were  above  all  due  to  the  Kirk,  as  entrusted 
with  these  other  interests  no  less  than  with  its  own. 

The  battle  was  not  over.  The  scheme  of  the  Book 
of  Discipline  remained,  even  after  the  statutes  of 
1567,  a  mere  'imagination,'  all  attempted  embodiment 
of  it  being  starved  by  the  nobility  and  the  crown. 
And  in  our  own  century  the  Church,  retaining  its 
statutory  jurisdiction  over  Catholics  and  Nonconformists, 
has  lost  its  statutory  control  over  both  the  schools  and 
the  poor,  while  it  has  never  got  anything  like  *  full  pos- 
session '  or  even  administration  of  the  teinds,  in  which 
all  three  were  to  share,  but  of  which  it  desired  to  be 
sole  trustee. 

It  it  easy  for  us,  looking  back — superfluously  easy — 
to  see  the  fundamental  mistake  in  Knox's  legislation. 
But  taking  that  first  step  of  intolerant  establishment  as 
fixed,  I  see  nothing  in  his  proposed  superstructure  which 

*  1567,  c.  10, 


JOHN  KNOX  115 

was  not  admirable  and  heroic,  and  also — as  heroic  things 
so  often  are — sane  and  even  practicable.  And  it  was  all 
conceived  in  the  interest  of  the  people — of  those  '  poor 
brethren '  of  land  and  burgh,  with  whom  Knox  increas- 
ingly identified  himself.  No  doubt  the  Kirk  had  no 
right  to  claim  administration,  even  as  trustee,  of  the 
tenth  of  the  yearly  fruits  of  all  Scottish  industry.  But 
when  we  think  of  the  objects  to  which  these  fruits  were 
to  be  applied,  we  shall  not  be  disposed  to  deal  hardly 
with  such  a  claim.  It  is  not  the  divided  and  dis- 
inherited Churches  of  Scotland  alone — it  is,  even  more, 
the  *  poor  labourers  of  the  ground ' — who  have  reason, 
in  these  later  days,  to  join  in  the  death-bed  denunciation 
by  Knox  of  the  *  merciless  devourers  of  the  patrimony 
of  the  Kirk.' 

Knox's  statesmanship  may  have  failed — partly  because 
an  unjust  and  unchristian  principle  was  unawares  im- 
bedded in  its  foundation,  and  partly  because  the  heredi- 
tary legislators  of  Scotland  could  not  rise  to  the  level  of 
its  peasant-reformer.  But  Knox's  churchmanship  did 
not  fail.  It  might  well  have  been  contended  that  the 
freedom  of  the  Church  had  been  compromised  by  the 
legislation  which  was  granted  or  petitioned  for.  But 
that  was  not  the  Church's  view,  and  the  internal  organi- 
sation which  nobles  and  politicians  refused  to  sanction, 
the  Church,  claiming  to  be  free,  instantly  took  up  as  its 
own  work.  In  each  town  or  parish  the  elders  and 
deacons  met  weekly  with  the  pastor  for  the  care  of  the 
congregation.  And  these  *  particular  Kirks  '  now  met 
half-yearly  representatively  as  the  *  Universal  Kirk '  of 
Scotland.  From  its  first  meeting  in  December  1560 
onwards,  the  General  Assembly  or  Supreme  Court  of  the 
Church  was  convened  by  the  authority  of  the  Church 
itself,  and  year  by  year  laid  the  deep  foundations  of  the 
social  and  religious  future  of  Scotland.     It  was  a  great 


ii6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

work — nothing  less  than  organising  a  rude  nation  into  a 
self-governing  Church.  And  there  were  difficulties  and 
dangers  in  plenty,  some  of  them  unforeseen.  The 
nobles  were  rapacious,  the  people  were  divided,  the 
ministers  leaned  to  dogmatism,  the  lawyers  leaned  to 
Erastianism,  the  Lowlands  were  menaced  by  Episcopacy, 
the  Highlands  were  emerging  from  heathenism,  and 
between  them  both  there  stretched  a  broad  belt  of 
unreformed  Popery.  There  were  a  hundred  difficulties 
like  these,  but  they  were  all  accepted  as  in  the  long 
day's  work.  For  in  Scotland  the  dayspring  was  now 
risen  upon  men  ! 

What  we  have  here  to  remember  is,  that  of  this  huge 
national  struggle  the  chief  weight  lay  on  the  shoulders  of 
Knox,  a  mere  pastor  in  Edinburgh.  And  during  the 
first  seven  years  of  its  continuance  this  indomitable  man 
was  sustaining  another  doubtful  conflict,  in  which  the 
issues  not  for  Scotland  only,  but  for  Europe,  were  so 
momentous  that  it  must  be  looked  at  separately. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  PUBLIC  LIFE  :  THE  CONFLICT  WITH  QUEEN  MARY 

Parliament  had  made  a  great  and  revolutionary  change. 
It  had  acted  as  if  the  government  had  been  already 
granted  to  it,  or,  in  Cecil's  phrase,  to  '  the  nation  of  the 
land.'  iVnd  the  change  was  on  one  side  a  breaking  off 
of  the  old  alliance  with  Catholic  France.  But  the 
sovereigns  of  Scotland,  now  and  for  the  last  twelve- 
month, were  no  other  than  the  King  and  Queen  of 
France.  They,  rather  than  Parliament,  were  the 
'  Authority,'  which,  according  to  the  consistent  theory 
of  that  age,  had  the  right  to  make  and  enforce  changes 
of  religion  ;  and  which,  according  to  the  more  puzzling 
theory  of  Knox,  had  the  right  to  do  so — provided  the 
religion  so  to  be  enforced  was  the  true  one.  Accordingly 
the  new  Confession  of  Faith  and  the  statutes  passed  by 
the  late  Parliament,  were  sent  to  Paris  by  the  Lord  St 
John.  He  waited  there  long,  but,  of  course,  brought 
back  no  ratification.  But  that,  says  Knox,  *  we  little 
regarded,  nor  yet  do  regard  ' ;  for,  he  adds,  falling  back 
rather  too  late  upon  one  of  those  great  principles  his 
utterance  of  which  has  sunk  into  the  hearts  of  his 
countrymen, 

*  all  that  we  did  was  rather  to  shew  our  dutiful  obedience  than  to 
beg  of  them  any  strength  to  our  religion,  which  from  God  has  full 
power,  and  needeth  not  the  suffrage  of  man,  but  in  so  far  as  man 
hath  need  to  believe  it,  if  that  ever  he  shall  have  participation  of 
the  life  everlasting.'  * 

*  '  Works,'  ii.  126. 

117 


ii8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

It  was  no  wonder  that  the  royal  pair  did  not  ratify 
a  Protestant  Confession,  for  during  their  brief  reign 
over  France  they  were  the  centre  of  a  keen  crusade 
against  Protestantism,  conducted  far  mors  by  Mary's 
counsellors  and  uncles,  the  Guises,  than  by  her  feeble- 
minded husband.  Towards  the  end  of  1560  this  had 
gone  so  far  that  secret  preparations  seem  to  have  been 
made  for  immediately  anticipating  the  St  Bartholomew 
of  twelve  years  later.  But  the  sudden  death  of 
Francis  and  the  widowhood  of  Mary  changed  the 
whole  situation.  The  new  King  was  in  the  power, 
not  of  the  Guises,  but  of  his  mother,  Catherine  de 
Medici ;  and  Mary  of  Scots  would  now  have  to  accept 
a  second  or  a  third  place  in  Paris.  But  in  Europe, 
and  in  the  politics  of  Europe,  the  beautiful  young 
widow  sprang  at  once  into  the  foremost  rank,  and 
became  the  star  of  all  eyes.  Ex-Queen  of  France, 
Queen-presumptive  of  England,  and  actual  Queen  of 
Scotland,  which  had  always  been  the  link  between  the 
other  two,  and  to  which  she  was  now  to  return,  the 
marriage  destiny  of  this  girl  of  eighteen  would  probably 
decide  the  wavering  balance  of  Christendom.* 

Mary  understood  her  high  part,  and  accepted  it 
with  alacrity.  Fascinating  and  beautiful,  keen-witted 
and  strong-willed,  she  would  have  found  herself  at 
home  in  this  great  game  of  politics,  even  if  it  had  not 
turned  upon  an  element  of  intense  personal  interest 
for  herself.  But  while  all  men  knew  that  her  hand 
was  the  chief  prize  of  the  game,  almost  the  first  man 
to  act  on  this   knowledge,  strange  to   say,  was  Knox. 

*  So  much  was  this  looked  forward  to,  that  two  months  before 
the  death  of  her  husband  King  Francis,  the  English  ambassador, 
writing  from  Paris  to  London  of  the  King's  feeble  health,  says  : 
'  There  is  much  talk  of  the  Queen's  second  marriage.  Some  talk 
of  the  Prince  of  Spain,  some  of  the  Duke  of  Austrich,  others  of 
the  Earl  of  Arran. 


JOHN  KNOX  119 

The  Treaty  of  Edinburgh  had  acknowledged  the  right 
of  the  Duke  (Hamilton  or  Chatelherault),  and  of  his 
eldest  son  Arran,  as  the  next  in  succession  to  the 
Scottish  crown  after  its  present  holder.  And  while 
that  present  holder  was  still  married  to  the  King  of 
France,  the  Scottish  nobles  had  urged  Arran  as  a  suit- 
able husband  for  Elizabeth  of  England.  It  would  be 
the  best  arrangement,  they  thought,  for  binding  the  two 
countries  together,  and  counteracting  the  inevitable  pull 
asunder  from  the  Sovereigns  in  Paris.  Elizabeth,  how- 
ever, had  replied,  to  the  grave  displeasure  of  the  Estates, 
that  she  was  not  *  presently  disposed  to  marry.'  And 
now  a  new  question  was  raised.  Scotland  was,  of 
course,  still  more  deeply  interested  in  the  probable 
second  marriage  of  its  own  Queen.  Arran,  an  ex- 
tremely flighty  young  man,  was  at  this  moment  much 
under  the  personal  influence  of  the  Reformer;  and  it 
was  with  Knox's  privity,  and  perhaps  on  his  suggestion, 
and  certainly  without  the  knowledge  of  the  nobility 
generally,  that  before  Mary  had  been  a  widow  for  a 
month,  her  young  Protestant  cousin  sent  her  a  ring  and 
a  secret  letter  of  courtship.  It  was  again  in  vain. 
When  Elizabeth  refused  him,  the  Estates  had  been 
offended,  but  Arran  himself  bore  the  loss  with  much 
resignation.  Now,  however,  the  case  was  different ; 
and  though  Mary  at  all  times  treated  her  young  kins- 
man with  kindness,  Arran  took  her  prompt  rejection  of 
his  present  overtures  grievously  to  heart,  and  his  wits, 
never  very  stable,  yv^ere  soon  completely  overturned. 
Knox,  however,  had  now  fair  warning  that  Mary  Stuart 
knew  herself  to  be  more  than  a  mere  Queen  of  Scots, 
and  that  the  infinitely  difificult  questions,  which  her 
approaching  return  to  Scotland  must  necessarily  raise, 
were  not  to  be  evaded  on  easy  terms.  - 

^here  was  among  these  one  theoretical  question  which 
ou^ht  to  have  been  a  difficulty  for  Knox,  but  of  which 


i2o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

he  was  not  now  disposed  to  make  much.  According  to 
his  view  women  should  not  be  sovereigns  at  all.  But, 
in  truth,  this  was  but  one  branch  of  the  general  grievance 
of  arbitrary  power  in  that  age.  The  Reformation  took 
place,  we  must  always  remember,  at  a  time  when  the 
hereditary  authority  of  kings  was  greater  than  either 
before  or  since.  And  this  arbitrary  power  of  one  man 
became,  if  possible,  a  little  more  absurd  when  it  hap- 
pened to  be  the  power  of  one  woman.  In  1557,  Knox 
had  found  himself  confronted  with  a  Queen  of  England, 
a  Queen  of  Scotland,  and  a  Queen-Regent  in  Scotland 
— all  of  them  ladies  immersed  in  Catholicism,  and  each 
in  a  position  which,  in  his  view,  implied  the  duty  of 
selecting  religion  for  all  her  lieges.  We,  in  our  time, 
have  a  very  simple  way  of  getting  rid  of  such  an  intoler- 
able difficulty.  But  in  that  age  a  man  even  of  the 
boldness  of  Knox  was  thankful  to  mitigate  it.  He 
thought  he  found  a  mitigation  in  the  view  (held  by 
thinkers  and  publicists  at  the  time  commonly  enough) 
that  women  should  not  be  entrusted  with  such  a  power ; 
and,  in  1 5  5  8,  he  published  anonymously  his  '  First  Blast 
of  the  Trumpet  against  the  Monstrous  Regiment  [Re- 
gimen or  Rule]  of  Women.'  Though  anonymous,  the 
book  was  well  known  to  be  his;  and  being  Knox's  it 
was  founded  not  so  much  on  theory  as  on  Scripture 
precedents,  largely  misread  according  to  the  exigencies 
of  the  argument.  But  the  publication  was,  in  any  case, 
a  practical  mistake.  Mary  of  England  died  immediately 
after,  and  was  succeeded  by  Elizabeth,  who  was  rather 
more  of  a  woman  than  her  sister,  but  to  whom  Knox 
and  Scotland  looked  as  their  only  ally  against  Continental 
Catholicism.  Knox  repeatedly  tried  to  explain  to  the 
new  English  Queen ;  but  that  very  great  but  very 
feminine  ruler  never  forgave  his  book.  Meantime  he 
came,  as  we  saw,  into  more  personal  contact  with  the 
Queen-Regent  of  Scotland,  and  had  the  highest  hopes 


JOHN  KNOX  121 

from  her.  Ultimately  she  disappointed  these ;  but  even 
when  she  was  deposed  by  the  nobles,  to  whom  he  had 
originally  looked  as  the  agents  in  the  Reform,  Knox 
insisted  on  keeping  open  a  door  for  her  restoration,  in 
the  event  of  her  coming  in  the  meantime  to  think  with 
himself.  And  now  her  daughter  was  come  to  her  native 
country  as  Queen  in  her  own  right.  Knox,  taught  by 
experience,  had  already  taken  part  in  private  overtures 
to  her,  and  was  no  longer  disposed  to  stand  on  any 
theoretical  difficulty  as  to  the  rule  of  a  woman.  The 
practical  difficulties  were  enough. 

And  the  practical  difficulties  were  tremendous.  Had 
Mary  ruled  as  a  modern  constitutional  Queen,  with 
toleration  of  religion  all  around,  things  would  have  been 
easy.  She  would  have  enjoyed  the  freedom  which  she 
granted  to  the  lowest  of  her  subjects,  and  every  one  of 
them  would  have  supported  her  enthusiastically  against 
domestic  and  foreign  aggression.  But  the  reign  of 
religion  which,  according  to  her  first  proclamation,  she, 
on  her  arrival,  '  found  publicly  and  universally  standing,' 
was  very  different.  It  was  one  by  which  half  the  lieges 
were  forbidden  the  exercise  of  their  own  religion  and  of 
their  ordinary  worship  ;  and  by  which  Scotland  and  all  its 
rulers  were  pledged  to  a  faith  she  had  been  trained  as  a 
child  to  detest,  and  as  a  Queen  to  suppress.  The  situa- 
tion was  impossible  from  the  first.  The  only  question 
was,  how  long  it  would  last. 

Knox  would  have  met  it  fairly  by  making  her  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  Protestant  Acts  and  Confession  a  con- 
dition of  her  being  acknowledged  by  Scotland.  And 
had  the  fact  been  known  that  Mary,  by  three  secret 
documents,  executed  just  before  her  childless  marriage  to 
the  Dauphin,  had  already  handed  over  her  native  king- 
dom, in  the  event  of  her  having  no  issue,  to  the  King 
of  France,  the  crisis,  which  was  to  be  postponed  for  so 
many  years,  might  have  come  at  once.     But  an  inter- 


122  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

mediate  plan  was  arranged  in  Paris  through  *  the  man 
whom  all  the  godly  did  most  reverence/  and  whose 
weight  of  character  was  gradually  giving  him  the  fore- 
most place  in  Scotland  —  Lord  James  Stewart,  the 
Queen's  natural  brother.  Mary,  quick  to  understand 
men,  put  herself  under  her  brother's  guidance,  and  the 
result  was  that  she  was  joyfully  received  in  Edinburgh, 
and  a  proclamation  was  issued  forbidding,  on  the  one 
hand,  any  *  alteration  or  innovation  of"  the  state  of 
religion '  as  Her  Majesty  found  it  in  the  realm  on  her 
arrival,  and,  on  the  other,  any  tumult  or  violence, 
especially  against  Her  Majesty's  French  domestics  and 
followers.  So,  on  the  first  Sunday,  while  the  Evangel 
was  publicly  preached  in  St  Giles  in  Edinburgh,  and  in 
all  the  great  towns  and  burghs  of  Scotland,  mass  was 
privately  celebrated  in  her  chapel  at  Holyrood,  the  Lord 
James  with  his  sword  keeping  the  door,  to  '  stop  all 
Scottish  men  to  enter  in,'  whether  to  join  in  the  worship 
or  to  disturb  it.  It  was  drawing  a  different  line  from 
that  which  had  been  fixed  by  the  recent  Parliament, 
whose  Acts  also  the  new  Queen  had  evaded  ratifying. 
Knox's  passion  against  '  idolatry,'  beyond  all  other  forms 
of  false  religion  or  irreligion,  was  fully  shared  by  the 
mass  of  his  followers,  and  he  tells  us  that,  on  this 
occasion,  he  worked  in  private  '  rather  to  mitigate,  yea 
to  sloken,  that  fervency  that  God  had  kindled  in  others.' 
But  in  the  pulpit  'next  Sunday'  he  said  that  *one  Mass  was 
more  fearful  to  him  than  if  ten  thousand  armed  enemies 
were  landed  in  any  part  of  the  realm,  of  purpose  to 
suppress  the  whole  religion ' — an  exaggeration  of  intoler- 
ance which  is  unintelligible,  until  we  remember  that  the 
*  one  mass '  which  he  was  thinking  of  was  that  of  the 
ruler  who  might  soon  have  the  power,  and  perhaps  had 
already  the  intention,  of  suppressing  religion. 

Mary  had  come  to  Scotland  with  the  deliberate  plan 
of  conciliating  and  capturing  her  native  kingdom,  and 


JOHN  KNOX  123 

she  was  not  the  woman  to  shrink  from  whatever  seemed 
to  be  necessary  in  the  process.  It  may  have  been  her 
brother  who  suggested  a  meeting  between  two  people 
whom,  in  different  ways,  he  certainly  liked  as  well  as  ad- 
mired. In  any  case,  Knox  was  now  at  once  sent  for  to 
the  Court,  and  there  followed  the  first  of  the  famous 
interviews  between  Knox  and  the  Queen,  recorded  in 
the  Fourth  Book  of  his  History.  The  detailed  truth  of 
these  Dialogues  is  not  to  be  inferred  merely  from  their 
vigour  and  verisimilitude.  It  results  equally  from  the 
fact  that,  throughout,  Knox  represents  the  young  Queen 
as  meeting  him  with  perfect  intelligence,  while  on  most 
points  she  actually  has  the  better  of  the  argument.  The 
vindication  of  Knox  has  come,  not  so  much  from  what 
he  has  himself  so  faithfully  recorded,  as  from  the  judg- 
ment of  history  on  the  whole  situation,  and  on  the 
relation  to  it  of  speakers  who  were  also  actors. 

The  first  is  probably  the  most  important  of  the 
dialogues.*  Mary  and  her  brother  received  Knox 
in  Holyrood,  two  ladies  standing  in  the  other  end  of 
the  room.  She  commenced  by  taxing  him  with  his 
book  against  her  *  regimen.'  He  explained  that,  if 
Scotland  was  satisfied  with  a  female  ruler,  he  would 
not  object. 

*But  yet,'  said  she,  '  ye  have  taught  the  people  to  receive  another 
religion  than  their  Princes  can  allow :  And  how  can  that  doctrine 
be  of  God,  seeing  that  God  commands  subjects  to  obey  their 
Princes  ? ' 

Knox,  in  answer,  ignored  the  article  of  his  Confession  which  bears 
closely  on  this  point,t  and  fell  back  on  the  more  fundamental 
truth. 

*  *  Works,'  ii.  277. 

t  '  To  Kings,  Princes,  Rulers,  and  Magistrates  we  affirm  that, 
chiefly  and  most  principally,  the  reformation  and  purgation  of  the 
Religion  appertains,  so  that,  not  only  are  they  appointed  for  civil 
policy,  but  also  for  maintenance  of  the  true  Religion,  and  for  sup- 


124  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

'Madam,  as  right  religion  took  neither  original  nor  authority 
from  worldly  princes,  but  from  the  Eternal  God  alone,  so  are  not 
subjects  bound  to  frame  their  religion  according  to  the  appetites  of 
their  Princes.' 

He  easily  illustrated  this  by  instances  of  men  in  Scripture,  who 
resisted  such  commands  of  Princes,  and  suffered. 

*  But  yet,'  said  she,  '  they  resisted  not  with  the  sword.' 

*  God,'  said  he,  *  Madam,  had  not  given  unto  them  the  power 
and  the  means.' 

'Think  ye,'  quoth  she,  '  that  subjects,  having  power,  may  resist 
their  Princes  ? ' 

'  If  their  Princes  exceed  their  bounds,'  quoth  he,  *  Madam,  and 
do  against  that  wherefore  they  should  be  obeyed,  it  is  no  doubt  but 
they  may  be  resisted,  even  by  power.' 

That  Princes  should  regulate  the  religion  of  subjects  Knox  held 
to  be  within  their  '  bounds,'  but  only  apparently  if  they  regulated  it 
aright,  and  according  to  the  Word.  Otherwise,  he  now  explained, 
the  prince  might  be  restrained,  like  a  father  *  stricken  with  a 
frenzy.'  At  this  remarkable  argument  the  Queen  'stood,  as  it 
were,  amazed  more  than  the  quarter  of  an  hour.'  Recovering 
herself,  she  said — 

'  Well,  then,  I  perceive  that  my  subjects  shall  obey  you  and  not 
me.'  .  . 

'God  forbid,'  answered  he,  in  words  which  really  express  his 
fundamental  view,  '  that  ever  I  take  upon  me  to  command  any  to 
obey  me,  or  yet  to  set  subjects  at  liberty  to  do  what  pleaseth  them. 
But  my  travel  is  that  both  princes  and  subjects  obey  God,  who,'  he 
added,  '  commands  queens  to  be  nurses  unto  His  people.' 

'  Yea,'  quoth  she,  '  but  ye  are  not  the  Church  that  I  will  nourish. 
I  will  defend  the  Kirk  of  Rome,  for,  I  think,  it  is  the  true  Kirk  of 
God.' 

'  Your  will,'  quoth  he,  *  Madam,  is  no  reason  ;  neither  doth  your 
thought  make  that  Roman  harlot  to  be  the  true  and  immaculate 
spouse  of  Jesus  Christ.'  .  .  . 

'  My  conscience,'  said  she,  '  is  not  so.' 

pressing  of  idolatry  and  superstition  whatsoever.  .  .  .  And,  there- 
fore, we  confess  and  avow  that  such  as  resist  the  supreme  power 
(doing  that  thing  which  appertains  to  his  charge)  do  resist  God's 
ordinance,  and  therefore  cannot  be  guiltless.' — 'Works,'  ii.  119. 


JOHN  KNOX  125 

'  Conscience,  Madam,  requires  knowledge,  and  I  fear  that  right 
knowledge  ye  have  none.' 

'  But,'  said  she,  '  I  have  both  heard  and  read.' 

.  .  .  '  Have  ye  heard,'  said  he,  *  any  teach,  but  such  as  the  Pope 
and  his  Cardinals  have  allowed  ? ' 

The  Queen  avoided  a  direct  answer,*  but  took  the  next  point 
with  unfailing  acuteness. 

'  Ye  interpret  the  Scriptures,'  said  she,  '  in  one  manner,  and  they 
interpret  in  another;  whom  shall  I  believe  ?  and  who  shall  be  judge  ? ' 

And  Knox's  answer  is  from  his  side  perfect — 

•  Ye  shall  believe  God,  that  plainly  speaketh  in  His  word  ;  and 
farther  than  the  word  teacheth  you,  ye  neither  shall  believe  the  one 
nor  the  other.  The  word  of  God  is  plain  in  itself ;  and  if  there 
appear  any  obscurity  in  one  place,  the  Holy  Ghost,  who  is  never 
contrarious  to  Himself,  explains  the  same  more  clearly  in  other 
places.' 

The  conference  was  long,  and  was  ended  with  mutual 
courtesies.  Both  parties  in  the  country  suspected  that 
the  new  sovereign  might  be  gradually  coming  round  to 
the  new  faith.  No  triumph  could  have  been  more 
glorious  for  Knox,  and  at  the  opening  of  the  interview 
he  had  used  every  method  of  conciliation.  But  he 
never  henceforth  deceived  himself  as  to  the  chances 
in  this  case.  Outwardly,  the  Queen  remained  friendly, 
and  he  remained  loyal;  but  his  opinion  as  expressed 
privately,  immediately  after  this  first  meeting,  was 
recorded  later  on. 

'  If  there  be  not  in  her  a  proud  mind,  a  crafty  wit,  and  an  indurate 
heart  against  God  and  His  truth,  my  judgment  faileth  me.' 

Induration  of  heart  was  not  a  charitable  judgment  to 

*  Mary  may  not  have  met  a  Protestant  teacher  before,  except 
those  whom  she  and  her  husband  had  more  than  once  viewed  suffer- 
ing on  the  scaffold  :  but  she  had  read  books  like  the  Colloquies  of 
Erasmus  with  keen  appreciation,  she  was  instructed  in  the  great 
controversy  from  the  Catholic  side,  and  one  of  the  youthful  exercises 
which  remain  written  in  her  girlish  hand  is  a  letter  to  John  Calvin 
in  defence  of  purgatory. 


126  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

pass  against  a  young  woman  brought  up  in  the  worst 
school  of  morals  in  Europe,  but  whom  the  speaker  held 
never  to  have  met  *  God  and  his  truth '  till  that  fore- 
noon. Yet,  as  usual,  Knox's  judgment  was  by  no 
means  wholly  wrong.  There  is  a  certain  brilliant  hard- 
ness about  the  charm  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  even 
with  posterity;  and  as  to  religion,  whatever  may  have 
been  the  case  in  the  later  years  of  her  sad  imprison- 
ment, there  is  no  evidence  in  her  early  days  in  Scotland 
of  personal  or  earnest  interest  in  the  religion  even  of 
her  own  church.*  And  a  tender  and  serious  interest  in 
religion  was  held  by  the  whole  Protestantism  of  that  day 
to  be  the  one  gate  for  the  individual  into  '  God's  truth.' 
Had  his  Queen  shown  anything  of  this  spirit  of  earnest 
enquiry,  our  rough  Reformer  might  have  been  precipi- 
tate to  help  her  steps,  though  they  should  be  as  yet  on 
the  wrong  side  of  the  dividing  line.  But  Mary  made 
no  pretences  on  the  subject,  and  it  was  her  misfortune, 
and  that  of  all  around,  that  her  opinion  on  religion — a 
matter  in  which  she  took  no  more  interest  than  was 
natural  to  her  years — should  have  been  all  important  to 
her  subjects.  They  at  least  were,  or  professed  to  be,  in 
earnest  about  it ;  and  the  man  who  in  her  presence  now 
represented  that  earnestness  made  no  pretences  either. 
But  we  may  be  sure  that  Knox's  judgment  on  a  *  proud 
mind '  as  to  the  more  central  and  personal  truths 
of  religion,  would  not  be  mitigated  by  that  keen  *  wit ' 
which  played  so  freely  round  its  external  parts,  and 
transfixed  so  easily  his  own  theory  of  Church  and  State. 
We  know  from  himself  that  Mary,  having  found  the 
weak  point  of  the  intolerant  legislation,  took  care  to 
press  upon  it.  She  was  '  ever  crying  conscience,  con- 
science !  it  is  a  sore  thing  to  constrain  the  conscience ; '  f 

*  See  Hume  Brown,  ii.  171,  note. 

t  *  Works,' ii.  276.     Her  answer  to  the  General  Assembly  in 
1565,  was  that  *  she  prays  all  her  loving  subjects,  seeing  they  have 


JOHN  KNOX  127 

and  she  selected  for  her  *  flattering  words '  the  best  of 
the  men  around  her,  till  from  the  question,  '  Why  may 
not  the  Queen  have  her  own  Mass,  and  the  form  of  her 
religion  ?  what  can  that  hurt  us  or  our  rehgion  ? ' 
there  came  a  formal  discussion  and  a  vote  of  the 
Lords  that  they  were  not  entitled  to  constrain  her. 
This  state  of  matters  continued  during  the  year  1562. 
But  the  real  danger,  of  course,  was  from  abroad,  and 
Knox  had  intelligence  of  all  that  was  going  on  there. 
In  December  1562a  victory  of  the  Guises  in  France  had 
been  followed  by  dancing  at  Holyrood;  and  Knox 
preached  against  '  taking  pleasure  for  the  displeasure  of 
God's  people.'  The  Queen  sent  for  him,  and  suggested 
his  speaking  to  herself  privately  rather  than  haranguing 
publicly  upon  her  domestic  proceedings :  a  proposal 
which  he  so  promptly  rejected  that  she  at  once  turned 
her  back  on  him.  It  was  on  this  occasion  that,  hearing 
the  whisper  as  he  went  out,  'He  is  not  afraid,'  he 
replied,  with  a  '  reasonably  merry '  countenance,  *  Where- 
fore should  the  pleasing  face  of  a  gentlewoman  affray 
me  ?  I  have  looked  into  the  faces  of  many  angry  men, 
and  yet  have  not  been  affrayed  above  measure.'  But 
the  effect  of  that  pleasing  face  upon  others  around  may 
be  measured  by  a  letter  written  next  day  to  Cecil  by 
Randolph,  who  had  for  some  time  been  Queen  Eliza- 
beth's envoy  in  Edinburgh.  He  was  an  intelligent  and 
well-meaning  man ;  but  Mary  was  far  more  than  a  match 
for  him,  as  she  had  been  in  France  for  an  abler  diplo- 
matist, Throckmorton.  Randolph  tells  the  English 
minister  that  Knox  is  still  full  of  '  good  zeal  and  affec- 
tion '  to  England.      '  I  know  also  that  his  travail  and 

had  experience  of  her  goodness,  that  she  neither  has  in  times  past, 
nor  yet  means  hereafter  to  press  the  conscience  of  any  man,  but  that 
they  may  worship  God  in  such  sort  as  they  are  persuaded  to  be  best, 
that  they  also  will  not  press  her  to  offend  her  own  conscience. ' — 
*  Book  of  the  Universall  Kirk,'  p.  34. 


128  Famous  scots 

care  is  great  to  unite  the  hearts  of  the  princes  and 
people  of  these  two  realms  in  perpetual  love  and  hearty 
kindness.'  In  the  previous  year  Randolph  had  heard 
an  incident  of  Knox's  first  interview  with  Mary,  which 
we  only  know  from  his  letter.  Even  then  Knox 
*  knocked  so  hastily  upon  her  heart  that  he  made  her 
weep,  as  well  you  know  there  be  of  that  sex  that  will  do 
that  as  well  for  anger  as  for  grief.'  But  since  that  date 
the  Queen  of  Scots  had  turned  her  caressing  courtesy 
directly  upon  this  Englishman,  and  even  the  golden  cup 
which  she  presented  to  him  at  Lord  James  Stewart's 
marriage  had  perhaps  less  influence  with  Randolph  than 
the  bright  eyes  of  one  of  her  'four  Maries'  whom  he 
was  now  pursuing.  So  he  adds  now  that  Knox  *  is  so 
full  of  mistrust  in  all  the  Queen's  doings,  words,  and 
sayings,  as  though  he  were  either  of  God's  privy  counsel, 
that  know  how  He  had  determined  of  her  from  the 
beginning,  or  that  he  knew  the  secrets  of  her  heart  so 
well,  that  neither  she  did  nor  could  have  for  ever  one 
good  thought  of  God  or  of  His  true  religion.'  No  criti- 
cism could  be  more  acute.  And  yet  the  research  of 
later  times  has  shown  that  Knox's  judgment,  or  informa- 
tion, as  to  what  Mary  of  Scots  was  now  doing,  was 
superior  to  that  of  all  around  him.  This  was  the 
very  close  of  1562,  and  in  the  next  month  of  January 
she  extended  her  Catholic  correspondence,  which  had 
hitherto  been  chiefly  with  the  Guises  and  her  Cardinal 
uncle,  by  letters  to  the  Pope.*  On  the  31st  she  wiites 
Pius  IV.  assuring  him  of  her  devotion  to  the  Church, 
and  that  for  it  and  for  the  restoration  to  it  of  her  king- 
dom she  is  ready  to  sacrifice  her  life.f  The  bearer,  too, 
of  this  secret  missive  was  Cardinal  Granvelle,  from  Madrid, 

*  The  Pope  had  already,  since  her  husband's  death,  sent  her  the 
Golden  Rose,  with  the  suggestion  that  in  Scotland  she  must  be  a 
rose  among  thortis. 

t  Labanoffs  '  Lettres  de  Marie  Stuart,'  i.  177. 


JOHN  KNOX  129 

and  deep  at  this  moment  in  the  persecuting  plans  of 
Alva  and  his  master  Philip.  For  a  new  and  greater 
danger  was  now  rising  for  Scotland.  Hitherto  the  chief 
pretenders  for  the  hand  of  the  Queen  of  Scots  had  been 
the  Archduke  Charles,  and  the  Duke  of  Anjou.  (The 
new  King  of  France  was  also  supposed  to  be  in  love 
with  her.)  But  now  the  project  was  pressed  of  a  marriage 
between  her  and  Don  Carlos,  the  oldest  son  of  Philip 
and  the  heir  of  the  mighty  monarchy  of  Spain.  And  it 
was  with  this  full  in  her  mind,  and  with  the  determina- 
tion to  take  a  step  forward  in  her  own  kingdom,  that 
Mary  again  sent  for  Knox — this  time  to  Lochleven, 
where  she  was  hawking.  The  occasion  was  well  chosen. 
The  Queen's  mass  was  now  tolerated :  why  should  not 
private  subjects  also  be  allowed  to  have  it,  provided  they 
worshipped  privately?  'Who  can  stop  the  Queen's 
subjects  to  be  of  the  Queen's  religion  ? '  Already  many 
Catholics  had  acted  upon  this  reasoning  at  Easter  of 
1563  j  but  in  the  West  the  Protestant  barons  and  magis- 
trates, instead  of  complaining  to  the  Queen  and  her 
Council,  had  apprehended  the  wrong-doers  and  proposed 
to  punish  them.  '  For  two  hours  '  the  Queen  urged  him 
to  persuade  the  gentlemen  of  the  West '  not  to  put  hands 
to  punish  any  man  for  the  using  of  thef?tselves  in  their 
religion  as  pleased  them.'  Nothing  could  be  more 
clearly  right.  But  nothing  could  be  more  clearly  against 
the  law ;  and  Knox  assured  her  that  if  she  would  enforce 
that  law  herself  her  subjects  would  be  quiet.  But  '  Will 
ye,'  said  she,  '  that  they  shall  take  my  sword  into  their 
hand  ? ' 

'The  sword  of  justice,  Madam,'  he  answered,  'is 
God's  j  and  if  the  magistrate  will  not  use  it  the  people 
must  do  so.  And  therefore  it  shall  be  profitable  to 
your  Majesty  to  consider  what  is  the  thing  your  Grace's 
subjects  look  to  receive  of  your  Majesty,  and  what  it  is 
that  ye  ought  to  do  unto   them   by  mutual    contract. 


I30  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

They  are  bound  to  obey  you,  and  that  not  but  in  God. 
You  are  bound  to  keep  laws  unto  them.  You  crave  of 
them  service :  they  crave  of  you  protection  and  defence 
against  wicked  doers.' 

The  Queen,  '  somewhat  offended,  passed  to  her 
supper,'  and  Knox  prepared  to  return  to  Edinburgh. 
But  her  brother,  afterwards  the  Regent,  had  heard  the 
result  of  the  conference,  and  Mary  learned  that  matters 
could  not  safely  be  left  in  this  condition.  Next  morn- 
ing the  Queen  sent  for  Knox  as  she  was  going  out 
hawking.  She  had  apparently  forgotten  all  the  keen 
dispute  of  the  evening  before ;  and  her  manner  was 
caressing  and  confidential.  What  did  Mr  Knox  think 
of  Lord  Ruthven's  offering  her  a  ring  ?  *  I  cannot  love 
him,'  she  added,  '  for  I  know  him  to  use  enchantment.' 
Was  Mr  Knox  not  going  to  Dumfries,  to  make  the 
Bishop  of  Athens  the  superintendent  of  the  Kirk  in  that 
county  ?  He  was,  Knox  answered ;  the  proposed 
superintendent  being  a  man  in  whom  he  had  con- 
fidence. *  If  you  knew  him,'  said  Mary,  '  as  well  as 
I  do,  ye  would  never  promote  him  to  that  office,  nor 
yet  to  any  other  within  the  Kirk.'  In  yet  another 
matter,  and  one  more  private  and  delicate,  she  required 
his  help.  Her  half-sister.  Lady  Argyll,  and  the  Earl, 
her  husband,  were,  she  was  afraid,  not  on  good  terms. 
Knox  had  once  reconciled  them  before,  but,  'do  this 
much  for  my  sake^  as  once  again  to  put  them  at  unity.' 
And  so  she  dismissed  him  with  promises  to  enforce  the 
laws  against  the  mass. 

Knox  for  once  fell  under  the  spell.  He  seems  to 
have  believed  that  this  most  charming  of  women  was 
at  last  leaning  to  the  side  of  her  native  land.  And  so 
he  sat  down  and  wrote  a  long  letter  to  Argyll.  He 
went  to  Dumfries,  and  on  making  enquiry,  he  found 
that  the  Queen  was  right  in  her  shrewd  estimate  of  the 
proposed  superintendent,  and  took  means  to  prevent  the 


JOHN  KNOX  131 

election.  It  turned  out,  too,  that  she  had  kept  her 
promise  about  citing  offenders,  and  no  fewer  than 
forty-eight  persons,  one  of  them  an  Archbishop, 
had  been  indicted.  The  first  ParHament  since  her 
landing  had  been  summoned  for  June,  and  Moray 
and  Lethington  seem  to  have  suggested  to  Knox  that 
the  Queen  would  be  glad  then  to  ratify  the  Acts  of 
1560,  in  exchange  for  the  approval  by  the  estates  of  some 
suitable  marriage.  Even  now,  it  was  these  two  heads 
of  the  Protestant  party  whom  Knox  trusted  rather  than 
Mary.  But  the  young  Queen  had  outwitted  all  of  them 
together.  The  prosecutions  throughout  the  country 
had  pacified  the  Protestants,  and  they  did  not  come  up 
to  the  Parliament.  When  it  met,  it  did  not  even  ask 
that  the  '  state  of  religion '  should  be  ratified.  Mean- 
time the  Cardinal  of  Lorraine  had  carried  to  the  Council 
of  Trent  the  adhesion  of  the  Queen  of  Scots,  and  a 
special  congregation  was  held  by  it  for  the  private 
reception  of  her  letter.  Worse  still,  the  plan  for  a 
Spanish  marriage,  and  for  setting  a  Scoto-Spanish  queen 
upon  the  throne  of  the  Bloody  Mary,  was  now  actively 
prosecuted.  All  this  spring,  while  professing  to  carry 
out  her  promises  to  Knox,  Mary  was  negotiating  with 
Madrid,  and  'already,  in  imagination.  Queen  of  Scot- 
land, England,  Ireland,  Spain,  Flanders,  Naples,  and 
the  Indies,'  she  was  but  little  interested  in  the  plans 
which  her  Scottish  nobility  were  proposing  for  her  to 
England.  Knox  had  hoped  that  if  not  a  Protestant 
noble  like  Leicester  or  Arran,  at  least  a  royal  Pro- 
testant like  the  King  of  Denmark  or  the  King  of 
Sweden,  would,  with  Elizabeth's  help,  be  a  successful 
suitor.  But  Queen  Elizabeth,  whom  Knox  pithily 
describes  as  *  neither  good  Protestant  nor  yet  resolute 
Papist,'  was  not  disposed  to  help  any  one  to  marry 
before  herself,  least  of  all  her  lovely  cousin.  And  the 
Scottish  statesmen,  Moray  and  Maitland,  like  her  own 


132  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

English  advisers  often,  were  now  so  driven  to  despera- 
tion by  Elizabeth's  vacillations  that  they  had  actually — 
possibly  with  the  hope  of  frightening  her — pressed  both  at 
home  and  abroad  the  project  of  marrying  the  Queen  of 
Scots  to  the  heir  of  Spain  ! '  This  apparently  came  to  the 
knowledge  of  Knox  along  with  the  refusal  to  meet  his 
hopes  on  the  part  of  the  Scots  Parliament ;  and  now  his 
cup  was  full.  Lord  James  Stewart,  by  this  time  the 
Earl  of  Moray,  son-in-law  of  the  Earl  Marischal,  and 
gifted  with  great  estates  of  the  forfeited  Earl  of  Huntly, 
had  been  his  chief  friend.  But  *  familiarly  after  that 
time  they  spake  not  together  more  than  a  year  and  a 
half;  for  the  said  John,  by  his  letter,  gave  a  discharge 
to  the  said  Earl  of  all  farther  intromission  or  care  with 
his  affairs.'  In  this  stately  letter  Knox  recalled  all  their 
past  career  in  common,  and  added  that,  seeing  his  hopes 
had  been  disappointed, 

'  I  commit  you  to  your  own  wit,  and  to  the  conducting  of  those 
who  better  please  you.  I  praise  my  God,  I  this  day  leave  you 
victor  of  your  enemies,  promoted  to  great  honours,  and  in  credit 
and  authority  with  your  sovereign.  If  so  ye  long  continue,  none 
within  the  realm  shall  be  more  glad  than  I  shall  be ;  but  if  that 
after  this  ye  shall  decay  (as  I  fear  that  ye  shall)  then  call  to  mind 
by  what  means  God  exalted  you.' 

But  the  pulpit  remained  to  him,  and  the  pulpit  in 
those  days  had  sometimes  to  combine  the  functions  of 
free  Parliament  and  free  press.  Knox  went  into  St  Giles', 
and  in  a  great  sermon  before  the  assembled  Lords,  from 
whose  retrospective  eloquence  we  have  already  quoted,* 
he  drove  right  at  the  heart  of  the  situation. 

*  And  now,  my  Lords,  to  put  end  to  all,  I  hear  of  the  Queen's 
marriage  ;  dukes,  brethren  to  emperors,  and  kings,  all  strive  for  the 
best  game.  But  this,  my  Lords,  will  I  say — note  the  day,  and  bear 
witness  after — whensoever  the  nobility  of  Scotland,  professing  the 

*  Page  89. 


JOHN  KNOX  133 

Lord  Jesus,  consent  that  an  infidel  (and  all  Papists  are  infidels)  shall 
be  head  to  your  Sovereign,  ye  do  as  far  as  in  you  lieth  to  banish 
Christ  Jesus  from  this  realm  ;  ye  bring  God's  vengeance  upon  the 
country,  a  plague  upon  yourselves,  and  perchance  ye  shall  do  small 
comfort  to  your  Sovereign.' 

That  sovereign  could  scarcely  be  expected  to  take  the 
same  view,  and  for  the  last  time  the  Queen  sent  for 
Knox.  No  one  knew  so  well  as  she  that  he  had  laid 
his  finger  on  the  true  hinge  of  the  political  question, 
and  that  her  opponent  would  have  a  far  stronger  case 
now  than  at  any  of  their  previous  interviews.  She  burst 
into  tears  the  moment  he  entered.  '  I  have  borne  with 
you,'  she  said  most  truly,  '  in  all  your  rigorous  manner 
of  speaking ;  I  have  sought  your  favour  by  all  possible 
means.'  '  True  it  is,  madam,'  he  answered,  '  your  Grace 
and  I  have  been  at  divers  controversies,  in  the  which 
I  never  perceived  your  Grace  to  be  offended  at  me.' 
Knox's  complacency  is  sometimes  thick-skinned  :  but 
he  was  not  wrong  in  thinking  that  Mary,  a  woman  with 
immensely  more  brains  than  the  generality  of  her  post- 
humous admirers,  had  from  the  first  understood  and, 
perhaps,  half  liked  her  uncompromising  adversary,  and 
that  she  had  at  least  enjoyed  the  dialectic  conflicts  in 
which  she  had  held  her  own  so  well.  But  the  matter 
was  more  serious  now.  '  What  have  you  to  do  with  my 
marriage?'  she  demanded.  Knox  in  answer  hinted 
that  she  had  herself  invited  him  to  give  her  private 
advice ;  but  what  he  had  said  was  in  the  pulpit,  where 
he  had  to  speak  to  the  nobility  and  to  think  of  the  good 
of  the  whole  commonwealth. 

'  What  have  you  to  do,'  she  persisted,  '  with  my 
marriage  ?  or  what  are  you  within  this  commonwealth  ?  ' 

'  A  subject  born  within  the  same,'  said  he,  '  Madam. 
And  albeit  I  neither  be  earl,  lord,  nor  baron  within  it, 
yet  has  God  made  me  (how  abject  that  ever  I  be  in 
your  eyes)  a  profitable  member  within  the  same.' 


134  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Under  the  new  discipline  the  preacher  claimed  a 
right  to  utter  opinions  even  as  to  private  marriages,  and 
used  it  much  beyond  what  the  fundamental  principles 
of  Protestantism  could  jilstify.  But  Knox  was  now 
dealing  with  his  Queen,  and  he  felt  himself  well  within 
the  line  of  his  duty  in  repeating  to  herself  the  deadly 
consequences  to  Scotland  if  its  nobiHty  ever  consented 
to  her  being  '  subject  to  an  unfaithful  husband.'  It  was 
unanswerable,  except  by  a  new  passion  of  tears,  under 
which  the  Reformer  stood  at  first  silent  and  unmoved. 
He  broke  silence  at  last  with  a  clumsy  attempt  to  explain 
or  to  console ;  and  Mary's  indignation  was  not  diminished 
by  Knox's  quaint  protest  that  he  was  really  a  tender- 
hearted man,  and  could  scarcely  bear  to  see  his  own 
children  weep  when  corrected  for  their  faults.  She 
broke  with  him  finally;  and  Knox,  dismissed  to  the 
ante-chamber,  found  himself  so  solitary,  though  among 
the  ladies  of  the  Court,  that  (as  we  have  already  seen) 
he  attempted  to  *  procure  the  company  of  women '  by 
moralisings  which  they  too  may  have  found  impressive 
rather  than  delightful. 

From  this  point — June  1563 — the  history  slopes 
steadily  downwards.  Mary's  ambition  was  still  to  be 
Queen  of  Spain.  Messengers  on  the  subject  went  to 
Spain  and  came  to  Scotland.  But  her  plans  were 
secretly  counterworked  by  her  old  enemy  Catherine 
de  Medici,  the  French  Queen-mother,  and  Philip 
changed  his  mind  continually.  In  December  an  in- 
cident happened  which  shewed  Knox's  new  position. 
A  riot  arose  in  the  Queen's  absence  between  Catholics 
who  wished  to  worship  in  her  private  chapel  and  Pro- 
testants who  wished  to  prevent  or  denounce  it.  The 
latter  were  indicted  for  'invading'  the  palace.  Knox 
instantly  wrote  a  letter  summoning  the  faithful  to  attend 
in  a  body  along  with  them  ;  and  he  was  cited  to  appear 
before  the  Queen  in  Council  on  a  charge  of  '  convoca- 


JOHN  KNOX  135 

tion  of  the  lieges.'  Once  more  he  stood  before  Mary, 
but  now  it  was  at  her  bar.  Knox  had  the  weakness  of 
listening  to  gossip,  especially  as  to  what  his  feminine 
adversaries  said ;  and  he  records  not  only  what  he  saw, 
that  'her  pomp  lacked  one  principal  point,  to  wit, 
womanly  gravity,'  but  also  that  she  was  heard  to  observe 
— this  time  apparently  in  admirable  Scots — '  Yon  man 
gart  me  greet,  and  grat  never  tear  himself.  I  will  see  if 
I  can  gar  him  greet.'  Knox  absolutely  refused  to  with- 
draw his  letter  or  to  apologise  for  it :  and  though  the 
Council  did  not  desire  to  justify  his  conduct,  they  heard 
with  some  sympathy  his  plea  that  Papists  were  not  good 
advisers  of  princes,  being  sons  of  him  who  was  'a 
murderer  from  the  beginning.'  Lethington,  the  Secre- 
tary, conducted  the  prosecution,  and  it  was  probably  he 
who  at  this  point  remarked — 

'  You  forget  yourself :  you  are  not  now  in  the 
pulpit.' 

'  I  am  in  the  place,'  said  Knox — and  again  his  word 
has  become  memorable — '  where  I  am  demanded  of 
conscience  to  speak  the  truth,  and  therefore  the  truth 
I  speak,  impugn  it  whoso  list.' 

The  votes  were  taken  twice  over;  but  the  nobles 
steadily  refused  to  find  Knox  guilty,  and  'that  night 
there  was  neither  dancing  nor  fiddling  in  the  palace.' 
During  the  whole  of  1564,  however,  Knox  and  the 
General  Assembly  were  divided  from  the  Protestant 
courtiers,  who  argued,  with  perfect  justice,  that  the 
attitude  of  the  Reformer  and  his  fellow  preachers  to 
the  Queen  was  one  of  scarcely  veiled  disloyalty.  In  a 
long  and  formal  conference  upon  the  subject,  Knox  said 
some  things  so  plainly  that  Lethington  answered — 

*  Then  will  ye  make  subjects  to  control  their  princes 
and  rulers  ? ' 

'And  what  harm,'  said  the  other,  'should  the  Common- 
wealth receive,  if  that  the  corrupt  affections  of  ignorant 


136  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

rulers  were  moderated,  and  so  bridled  by  the  wisdom 
and  discretion  of  godly  subjects  that  they  should  do 
wrong  nor  violence  to  no  man  ? ' 

But  even  the  leading  men  of  the  Court,  themselves 
Protestants,  were  now  beginning  to  be  disquieted  by  a 
sense  that  they  did  not  know  what  their  queen  was 
planning,  and  that  they  could  not  be  responsible  for 
her  actions.  During  this  year,  1564,  she  was  making 
herself  more  independent,  both  of  them  and  of  her  old 
advisers  in  France ;  one  great  step  being  the  promotion 
of  the  Italian,  Rizzio,  who  was  now  her  confidential 
secretary.  The  Spanish  marriage  was  becoming  more 
hopeless,  and  the  eyes  of  Mary's  Catholic  friends  were 
now  turning  in  another  direction.  The  man  at  the 
English  court  nearest  to  the  English  throne  was  young 
Henry  Darnley,  and  Elizabeth  had  herself  jealously 
suggested  that  '  yonder  long  lad '  might  possibly  please 
her  Scottish  cousin.  Mary  and  he  were  both  great- 
grandchildren of  Henry  VII.,  and  their  union  would 
consolidate  the  Scottish  claim  to  the  English  crown 
— a  dangerous  result  for  the  daughter  of  Ann  Boleyn. 
That  was  a  sufficient  reason  for  Darnley  not  being 
encouraged  to  go  to  Scotland;  but  he  was  at  last 
allowed  to  leave  London  secretly  in  February  1565. 
The  young  people  met  in  Wemyss  Castle,  and  it  was  soon 
plain  that  Mary  and  her  handsome  cousin  were  on  the 
best  terms.  Archbishop  Beaton,  acting  as  her  secretary 
in  Paris,  was  still  pressing  King  Philip,  and  on  the  15  th 
of  March  he  warned  the  Spanish  ambassador  that  unless 
his  master  came  to  the  rescue  Mary  would  have  to  throw 
herself  away  on  her  English  relative.  There  was  no 
response,  and  between  the  7th  and  loth  of  April,  Mary 
of  Scots  and  Henry  Lord  Darnley  were  privately  married 
in  Rizzio's  apartment  in  Holyrood.  No  one  knew  it ; 
and  nearly  two  months  after,  the  Archbishop  again  urges 
the  King  of  Spain  to  consent,  for  his  Queen  is  not  yet 


JOHN  KNOX  137 

married,  and  there  is  still  time  for  the  greater  alliance. 
Seven  weeks  more  passed,  and  on  the  29th  June  the 
public  marriage  took  place,  and  Mary  gave  her  husband 
the  title  of  king. 

It  was  the  downfall  of  Moray,  and,  as  Knox  points 
out,  of  the  whole  temporising  Protestant  policy  since  the 
Queen  came  to  Scotland.  Moray  saw  that  clearly 
enough,  and  confederating  with  a  number  of  the  other 
Lords  to  protest  against  the  marriage  and  the  proposed 
kingship,  the  whole  party  were  within  three  months 
driven  out  of  Scotland  by  the  energy  of  the  Queen.  In 
the  field,  Knox  confesses,  '  her  courage  increased  man- 
like so  much,  that  she  was  ever  w^ith  the  foremost.'  And 
in  her  proclamation  she  frankly  made  it  her  case  against 
the  recalcitrant  nobility 

*  that  the  establishment  of  Religion  will  not  content  them,  but 
we  must  be  forced  to  govern  by  Council,  such  as  it  shall  please  them 
to  appoint  us ;  a  thing  so  far  beyond  all  measure,  that  we  think 
the  only  mention  of  so  unreasonable  a  demand  is  sufficient  ...  for 
what  other  thing  is  this  but  to  dissolve  the  whole  policy,  and  in  a 
manner  to  invert  the  very  order  of  nature,  to  make  the  Prince  obey 
and  subjects  command?' 

For  now  the  triumph  of  absolutism  and  of  Rizzio,  as 
the  Papal  agent,  was  complete — more  so  than  Moray  or 
Knox  knew.  France  and  Spain,  long  divided,  seemed 
at  last  to  be  working  together  for  the  faith.  And  the 
greatest  of  European  monarchs,  though  he  declined  to 
wed  his  heir  in  Scotland,  had  by  no  means  abandoned 
the  cause  there.  On  the  contrary,  in  this  very  spring  of 
1565,  while  the  Darnley-marriage  was  preparing,  the 
savage  Alva  and  Granvelle  were  laying  down  at  Bayonne, 
by  Philip's  authority,  the  first  lines  of  the  plan  for  send- 
ing an  Armada  against  Protestant  England,  in  order  to 
place  Mary  on  its  throne  :  and  the  assurance  to  that 
effect,  given  by  Alva's  own  lips  to  Mary's  envoy,  was 


138  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

carried  by  him  to  Scotland  in  time  to  swell  the  exulta- 
tion of  her  nuptials.* 

One  man  was  left  in  Scotland,  and  he  now  had  at 
least  the  people  of  Edinburgh  with  him.  Darnley, 
though  a  Catholic,  thought  it  prudent  to  come  to  Knox's 
preaching  on  a  Sunday  very  soon  after  the  marriage,  but 
was  so  unfortunate  as  to  hear  a  sermon  on  the  text — 
'  Other  lords  than  Thou  have  had  dominion  over  us.'  The 
preacher  explained  that  in  very  bad  cases  of  ingratitude 
of  the  people,  God  permitted  such  lords  to  be  *  boys  and 
women,'  and  the  weakness  of  Ahab  was  specially  dwelt 
upon  in  not  restraining  his  strong-minded  wife.  Worse 
than  all,  the  service  was  an  hour  longer  than  he  had 
expected ;  and  the  king,  characteristically,  '  would  not 
dine,  and  with  great  fury  passed  to  the  hawking.' 
Knox  was  summoned  to  the  Council,  and  ordered  not 
to  preach  while  the  Court  remained  in  town.  He  gave 
the  particularly  cautious  answer  that  '  //  the  Church 
would  command  him  either  to  speak  or  abstain,  he 
would  obey,  so  far  as  the  Word  of  God  would  permit 
him ' ;  but  times  were  changed,  and  in  this  matter  the 
Church  had  now  to  obey  the  Authority.  The  Lords  of 
the  Congregation,  for  four  years  the  Queen  of  Scots' 
nominal  advisers,  were  very  soon  in  exile  in  England ; 
and  Queen  Elizabeth,  in  mortal  dread  of  the  appre- 
hended union  of  France  and  Spain  in  a  Catholic 
crusade  against  her  own  crown,  received  '  her  sister's 
rebels '  with  upbraiding  and  almost  menace.  Knox  and 
the  General  Assembly  maintained  a  defensive  warfare  all 
through  the  year  1565-6.  But  they  had  no  representa- 
tion in  the  Court,  and  Rizzio  succeeded  so  far  that 
Mary  herself  tells  f  how  she  had  arranged  for  the 
counter-revolution  being  commenced  by  a  Parliament  in 

*  The  dates  are  indicated  generally  in  Hill  Burton's  *  History,'  iv, 

133- 

t  Labanoffs  '  Lettres  de  Marie  Stuart/  i.  342. 


JOHN  KNOX  139 

April  1566,  'the  spiritual  estate  being  placed  therein  in 
the  ancient  manner,  tending  to  have  done  some  good 
anent  restoring  the  old  religion.'  Two  things  prevented 
this  smooth  programme  being  carried  out.  Mary's 
rather  weak  fancy  for  Darnley  seems  to  have  only  lasted 
for  a  few  weeks  after  her  marriage.  He  turned  out  to 
be  a  fool ;  and  his  wife  and  the  nobility  declined  to 
promise  him  the  Crown-matrimonial,  i.e.^  to  make  him 
successor  to  her  in  case  there  were  no  children.  Darnley 
now  courted  the  banished  lords,  and  made  a  '  Band ' 
with  them  according  to  the  old  Scots  fashion,  a  fashion 
which  was  to  break  out  nearer  home  in  more  savage 
survival  still.  For  Mary's  imprudent  favouritism  of 
Rizzio  had  roused  the  deadly  jealousy  both  of  her  hus- 
band and  of  the  nobles  who  remained  at  home.  And 
on  the  9th  of  March  a  band  of  men  headed  by  Morton 
and  Ruthven  dragged  the  Italian  out  from  her  supper- 
table  at  Holyrood,  and  stabbed  him  to  death  in  the 
ante-chamber ;  Darnley  and  the  lords  remaining  in  order 
to  make  terms  with  their  Queen.  The  outrage  was  un- 
availing ;  in  two  days  Mary  had  talked  over  her  husband, 
escaped  with  him  from  Holyrood  to  Dunbar,  and  sum- 
moned her  new  favourite.  Lord  Bothwell,  to  her  aid. 
Years  before,  when  fighting  the  Earl  of  Huntly  in  the 
far  North,  she  had  expressed  to  Randolph  her  regret 
'  that  she  was  not  a  man  to  know  what  life  it  was  to  lie 
all  night  in  the  fields,  or  to  walk  on  the  causeway,  with 
a  jack  and  knapschalle,  a  Glasgow  buckler,  and  a  broad- 
sword.' And  now,  as  before,  her  energy  swept  the 
field  clear  of  her  enemies,  and  she  returned  to  Edinburgh 
victorious.  Knox  may  not  have  known  of  the  formal 
Band  ;  but  he  was  even  more  opposed  to  his  Queen  than 
were  those  who  signed  it,  and  on  17th  March  1566  he 
'  departed  of  the  Burgh  at  two  hours  afternoon,  with  a 
great  mourning  of  the  godly  of  religion.*  Five  days 
before,  on  the  very  day,  indeed,  after  Mary  had  ridden 


140  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

away  through  the  night  from  Holyrood,  he  had  penned, 
'  with  deliberate  mind  to  his  God/  his  retrospective  con- 
fession, *  prefixing  to  it  the  prayer — 

'  Lord  Jesus,  receive  my  spirit,  and  put  an  end,  at  thy  good 
pleasure,  to  this  my  miserable  life  ;  for  justice  and  truth  are  not  to 
be  found  among  the  sons  of  men  ! ' 

It  was  the  old  sigh,  which  has  been  breathed  from 
the  most  heroic  hearts  in  times  of  crisis  and  failure ; 
'  Let  me  now  die,  for  I  am  not  better  than  my  fathers  ! ' 
And  here  once  again  it  was  premature.  For  the  Queen, 
now  awakened  to  the  whole  situation,  saw  how  rash  had 
been  her  recent  aggressive  policy.  After  the  birth  of  her 
son  in  June  1566,  instead  of  framing  Parliamentary  enact- 
ments against  the  new  religion,  she  vaguely  proposed  to 
make  some  provision  for  the  ministers,  and  allowed  the 
banished  lords,  one  by  one,  to  come  back.  And  though 
they  now  found  their  unfortunate  confederate,  Darnley, 
in  neglect  and  disgrace,  they  found  also  their  sovereign 
passing  rapidly  under  a  new  and  more  controlling  in- 
fluence ;  and  the  Earl  of  Bothwell  was  a  nominal  Pro- 
testant. Knox  at  first  was  forbidden  to  return  to  his 
pulpit,  and  he  visited  the  Churches  in  Ayrshire  and  Fife, 
occupying  himself  among  other  things  in  revising  the 
first  four  books  of  his  history — the  only  part  which  is 
finished  by  his  trenchant  pen.  But  in  December  the 
General  Assembly  met  in  Edinburgh,  and  Knox  was 
with  them.  We  have  already  seen  the  striking  answer  sent 
by  this  Assembly  t  as  to  the  proposed  gifts  of  the  Queen. 
But  their  attention  was  arrested  at  this  moment  by  another 
and  very  inconsistent  order  of  the  Crown  restoring  the 
Archbishop  of  St  Andrews,  the  head  of  the  old  hier- 
archy, to  his  consistorial  jurisdiction,  contrary  to  the  law 
of  1560.  It  was  either  a  very  absurd,  or  a  very  alarm- 
ing, step ;  and  Knox,  at  the  request  of  the  Assembly, 

*  Page  28.  t  Page  113. 


JOHN  KNOX  141 

prepared  a  powerful  manifesto  on  the  subject.  He  then 
went  away,  with  their  approval,  on  a  long-meditated 
visit  to  England,  to  visit  his  sons  in  Northumberland  or 
Yorkshire,  and  to  strengthen  his  friends  on  the  more 
Puritan  side  of  the  EngUsh  Church  in  their  new  troubles 
under  Elizabeth.  Little  is  known  of  his  proceedings 
there ;  though  he  remained  in  England  during  the  whole 
time  between  the  Assembly  of  December  1566  and 
another  which  sat  on  25th  June  1567. 

But  between  these  dates,  and  in  Knox's  absence,  the 
most  amazing  tragedy  in  the  history  of  Scotland  had 
unrolled  itself  in  Edinburgh.  Week  by  week,  the  in- 
creasing power  of  Lord  Both  well  over  the  Queen,  and 
her  increasing  dislike  of  her  husband,  had  attracted  the 
attention  of  men.  But  before  February  there  was  a 
sudden  reconcihation  between  her  and  Darnley.  She 
brought  him  to  a  house  in  Kirk  of  Field,  near  Edinburgh, 
and  at  midnight  of  the  9th  it  was  blown  up  with  gun- 
powder by  the  servants  of  Bothwell,  the  body  of  the 
King  being  found  in  the  garden.  On  2  ist  April  Bothwell 
waylaid  and  carried  off  Mary  to  Dunbar.  But  he  was 
still  a  married  man,  having  wedded  Lord  Huntly's  sister 
fourteen  months  before.  And  now  in  May,  came  in 
the  new  consistorial  jurisdiction  of  the  Archbishop,  for 
the  only  act  which  that  prelate  ever  performed  under  it 
was  to  confirm  a  sentence  of  nullity  of  this  very  marriage, 
and  that  on  the  ground  that  Bothwell  and  his  wife  being 
too  nearly  related,  had  not  procured  a  Papal  dispensa- 
tion (the  Papal  dispensation  having  not  only  been  pro- 
cured before  the  marriage,  but  having  been  granted  by  the 
hands  of  the  Archbishop  himself  as  Legate).  Ten  days 
after  this  divorce,  and  in  spite  of  dissuasions  from  her 
friends  at  home  and  abroad,  the  ill-fated  Queen  publicly 
married  the  murderer  of  her  husband,  and  the  strong 
shudder  of  disgust  that  passed  through  the  commons  of 
Scotland  shook  her  throne  to  the  ground.     So  upon 


142  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Mary's  half-compulsory  abdication,  Moray  became 
Regent  for  the  infant  King,  who  was  crowned  at  Stirling, 
Knox  preaching  the  coronation  sermon.  (There  were 
men  present  on  this  triumphal  occasion  before  whom 
he  had  preached  once  before  in  the  same  place,  when 
sunk  in  despair  after  that  '  dark  and  dolorous  '  flight 
from  Edinburgh.)  And  now  came  that  great  winding 
up  already  discussed  in  our  last  chapter,  the  Protestant 
legislative  settlement  of  Church  matters  in  1567. 

It  was  the  second  great  climax  of  Knox's  life ;  and 
now  his  public  work  was  done.  We  shall  not  find  it 
necessary  to  follow  his  later  years  in  detail.  They  were 
troubled  by  ineffectual  attempts  to  reverse  the  verdict  of 
the  people  already  given.  For  Mary  had  a  majority  of  the 
nobles  still  with  her,  and  Elizabeth  of  England  resented 
the  claim  of  a  nation  to  judge  its  sovereign.  An  appeal 
to  arms  followed  :  the  Regent  was  victorious  at  Lang- 
side,  and  the  Queen  of  Scots  fled  to  a  long  captivity  in 
England.  But  her  claims  threw  Scotland  into  civil  war 
during  most  of  the  remaining  life  of  Knox.  Moray  was 
assassinated  in  1570  by  one  of  the  Hamiltons  whose  life 
he  had  spared  upon  Knox's  intercession ;  and  next 
Sunday  Knox,  who  had  long  since  returned  into  friend- 
ship with  him,  preached  on  '  Blessed  are  the  dead,'  and 
'  moved  three  thousand  persons  to  shed  tears  for  the 
loss  of  such  a  good  and  godly  governor,'  But  Lething- 
ton  had  now  gone  over  to  the  exiled  Queen,  and  took 
with  him  even  Kirkaldy,  who  had  fought  with  Moray  at 
Langside.  Henceforth  the  Castle,  where  they  resided, 
was  a  danger  to  Edinburgh,  and  in  July,  15  71,  Knox, 
by  agreement  of  both  parties  there,  was  sent  for  a 
twelvemonth  to  St  Andrews  to  be  out  of  harm's  way. 
He  had  left  Edinburgh  in  wholly  broken  health,  after  a 
fit  of  apoplexy  :  he  returned  feebler  still,  and  had  a  col- 
league at  once  appointed.  Yet  when  the  news  came  from 
Paris,  in  September,  1572,  of  the  great  massacre  of  St 


JOHN  KNOX  143 

Bartholomew,  Knox  himself  took  charge  of  organising 
the  protest  of  Scotland  against  the  gigantic  crime.  But 
that  crime  of  France  saved  Scotland,  and  the  voice  of 
Scotland's  leader  was  no  longer  needed.  The  end  was 
now  near,  and  while  *  so  feeble  as  scarce  can  he  stand 
alone '  he  sends  a  farewell  message  to  *  Mr  Secretary 
Cecil '  through  Killigrew,  the  new  English  envoy. 

'  John  Knox  doth  reverence  your  Lordship  much,  and  willed  me 
once  again  to  send  you  word,  that  he  thanked  God  he  had  obtained 
at  His  hands,  that  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  is  truly  and  simply 
preached  throughout  Scotland,  which  doth  so  comfort  him  as  he 
now  desireth  to  be  out  of  this  miserable  life.'* 

And  with  an  explosion,  equally  characteristic,  against 
one  who  had  anonymously  accused  Knox  of  '  seeking 
support  against  his  native  country,'  we  may  close  our 
notices  of  this  great  public  life. 

*  I  give  him  a  lie  in  his  throat  !  .  .  .  What  I  have  been  to  my 
country,  although  this  unthankful  age  will  not  know,  yet  the  ages  to 
come  will  be  compelled  to  bear  witness  to  the  truth,  ...  To  me 
it  seems  a  thing  most  unreasonable,  that,  in  this  my  decrepit  age, 
I  should  be  compelled  to  fight  against  shadows  and  howlets,  that 
dare  not  abide  the  light ! '  f 

*  *  Works,'  vi.  633.  f  *  Works,'  vi.  596. 


CHAPTER  VII 

CLOSING   YEARS    AND    DEATH 

It  is  time  to  part  from  the  public  life  of  the  greatest 
public  man  whom  Scotland  has  known.  That  side  of 
Knox's  work,  attractively  presented  to  the  world  at  first 
in  the  memorable  biography  of  Dr  Thomas  M'Crie,  has 
been  admirably  restated  by  Dr  Hume  Brown  for  a  later 
age  and  from  his  own  judicial  standpoint.  But  Knox's 
public  life  was  not  the  whole  of  his  work  :  in  bulk,  it 
was  a  small  part  of  it.  When  he  became  minister  of 
Edinburgh  in  1560  there  was  only  one  church  there; 
St  Cuthberts  and  Canongate  were  country  parishes  out- 
side. It  was  some  years  before  he  got  a  colleague ;  and, 
as  sole  minister  of  Edinburgh,  he  preached  twice  every 
Sunday  and  three  times  during  the  week  to  audiences 
which  sometimes  were  numbered  by  thousands.  Once  a 
week  he  attended  a  Kirk  Session  ;  once  a  week  he  was  a 
member  of  the  assembly  or  meeting  of  the  neighbouring 
elders  for  their  *  prophesying '  or  *  exercise  on  Scrip- 
ture.' Often  he  was  sent  away  to  different  districts  of 
the  country  on  preaching  visitations  under  the  orders  of 
the  Church.  But  when  Knox  was  at  home,  his  prepara- 
tions for  the  pulpit,  which  were  regular  and  careful,  and 
his  other  pastoral  work,  challenged  his  whole  time.  And 
this  work  was  carried  on  in  two  places  chiefly ;  in  St 
Giles,  which  now  became  the  High  Church  of  Edinburgh, 
and  in  his  house  or  lodging,  which  was  always  in  or  near 
the  Netherbow,  a  few  hundred  yards  farther  down  the 
High  Street.  The  picturesque  old  building  'in  the 
144 


JOHN  KNOX  145 

throat  of  the  Bow,'  which  attracts  innumerable  visitors  as 
the  traditional  house  where  Knox  died,  was  not  that  in 
which  he  spent  most  part  of  his  Edinburgh  Hfe.  From 
1560  down  to  about  the  time  of  his  second  marriage  he 
lived  in  a  '  great  mansion '  on  the  west  side  of  Turing's 
or  Trunk  Close  ;  and  thereafter  for  some  years  in  a 
house  on  the  east  side  of  the  same  close.  Neither  of 
them  now  exists  ;  but  the  entrance  into  the  High  Street 
from  both  was  under  the  windows  of  the  third  or  Nether- 
bow  house,  which  is  shewn  in  modern  times,  and  which 
was  probably  ready  for  Knox's  reception,  if  not  earlier, 
at  least  when  he  came  back  from  his  latest  visit  to  St 
Andrews.  In  these  he  kept  his  books,  which  constituted 
much  the  larger  part  of  his  personal  property — ('  you  will 
not  always  be  at  your  book,'  Queen  Mary  had  said,  as 
she  turned  her  back  upon  him  in  closing  their  second 
interview).  And  with  them,  and  with  helps  from  the  old 
logic  and  the  new  learning  (for  while  abroad  he  had 
added  Hebrew  to  his  previous  instruments  of  Greek 
and  Latin)  he  studied  hour  by  hour  for  the  sermons 
which  he  delivered — and  their  delivery  also  lasted  hour 
after  hour — in  the  great  church.  In  that  church  there  was 
occasionally  much  to  draw  even  the  vulgar  eye.  One 
day  it  was  Huntly,  the  great  Catholic  Earl,  the  most 
famous  man  in  Knox's  opinion  among  the  nobility  of 
Scotland  for  three  hundred  years  for  '  both  felicity  and 
worldly  wisdom,'  whose  huge  bulk  as  he  had  sat  opposite 
to  the  preacher  (the  year  before  he  died  '  without  stroke 
of  sword '  on  the  field  of  Corrichie)  was  afterwards  thus 
vividly  recalled. 

'  Have  ye  not  seen  one  greater  than  any  of  you  sitting  where 
presently  ye  sit,  pick  his  nails,  and  pull  down  his  bonnet  over  his 
eyes,  when  idolatry,  witchcraft,  murder,  oppression,  and  such  vices 
were  rebuked  ?  Was  not  his  common  talk,  When  the  knaves  have 
railed  their  fill,  then  will  they  hold  their  peace  ? '  * 

*  *  Works,'  ii.  362. 
4  K 


146  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Or,  again,  it  was  the  French  Ambassador,  Le  Croc, 
sitting  in  state  on  the  first  Sunday  after  the  news  of  St 
Bartholomew,  who  heard  the  preacher  denounce  his 
master,  King  Charles,  as  a  '  murderer,'  from  whom  and 
from  whose  posterity  the  vengeance  of  God  would  refuse 
to  depart.  But  these  were  incidents  dramatic  and 
political.  And  noble  as  a  political  calling  may  be,  there 
have  always  been  some  to  believe  that  drawing  men  and 
women  up  to  a  higher  moral  life,  especially  when  that  life 
is  fed  from  an  immortal  hope,  is  nobler  still.  But  Knox, 
let  us  remember,  was  throughout  his  early  ministry  the 
witness  of  a  still  more  fascinating  and  indeed  unexampled 
spectacle — a  whole  generation  suddenly  confronted  with 
the  moral  call  of  primitive  Christianity,  and  striving  to 
respond  to  it,  no  longer  in  dependence  on  Church 
tradition,  but  by  each  man  moulding  himself  directly 
upon  Christian  facts  and  Christian  promises  in  the  very 
form  in  which  these  were  originally  delivered  by  the 
apostolic  age.  He  was  witness  of  it ;  and  more  than 
witness,  for  beyond  any  other  man  in  Scotland  Knox  was 
its  guide.  And  while  the  guidance  of  the  great  theo- 
logical leaders  of  that  generation  tended  naturally — and 
quite  apart  from  their  usurped  statutory  ascendency — to 
press  too  heavily  upon  the  recovered  freedom  of  Scot- 
land, that  danger  was  but  little  felt  in  those  early  days  of 
enthusiasm  in  the  High  Church  of  Edinburgh. 

What  like  was  the  man  who  was  seen,  almost  every 
day  during  all  those  years,  pacing  up  and  down  between 
the  Netherbow  and  St  Giles  ? 

Knox,  as  we  are  told  by  a  surviving  contemporary 
(who  enclosed  a  portrait  of  him  along  with  the  descrip- 
tion), was  a  man  of  slightly  less  than  middle  height,  but 
with  broadish  shoulders,  limbs  well  put  together,  and 
long  fingers.  He  had  a  rather  swarthy  face,  with  black 
hair,  and  a  beard  a  span  and  a  half  long,  also  black,  but 


JOHN  KNOX  147 

latterly  turning  grey.  The  face  was  somewhat  long,  the 
nose  decidedly  so,  the  mouth  large,  and  the  lips  full,  so 
that  the  upper  lip  in  particular  seemed  to  be  swollen. 
The  chief  peculiarity  of  his  face  was  that  his  eyes — sunk 
between  a  rather  narrow  forehead,  with  a  strong  ridge  of 
eyebrow,  above,  and  ruddy  and  swelling  cheeks,  below — 
looked  hollow  and  retreating.  But  those  eyes  were  of  a 
darkish  blue  colour,  their  glance  was  keen  and  vivid,  and 
the  whole  face  was  'not  unpleasing.'  We  can  easily  be- 
lieve that  '  in  his  settled  and  severe  countenance  there 
dwelt  a  natural  dignity  and  majesty,  which  was  by  no 
means  ungracious,  but  in  anger  authority  sat  upon  his 
brow.'  * 

This  seems  to  be  a  true  portraiture  of  Knox  in  the 
days  of  his  vigour  ;  if  we  are  to  speak  of  vigour  in  the 
case  of  a  man  with  a  small  and  frail  body  (one  of  his 
early  biographers  speaks  of  him  as  a  mere  corpuscle)^  and 
a  man  throughout  his  whole  public  life  struggling  with 
disease.  In  the  last  year  of  his  prematurely  'decrepit 
age,'  we  have  another  description  of  him ;  and  this  time 
it  is  taken  in  St  Andrews.  Edinburgh  and  Leith  were 
now  again  at  war,  and  the  quarter  of  Knox's  house  was 
the  most  unsafe  in  the  city.  The  '  King's  Men '  outside 
were  always  attempting  to  force  the  Netherbow  Port ;  and 
their  guns,  planted  close  by  on  the  Dow  Craig,  f  and  a 
little  farther  off  on  Salisbury  Crags,  smote  from  either 
side.  They  were  crossed  and  answered,  not  only  by 
the  great  guns  of  the  castle,  held  by  the  Queen's  Men 
under  Kirkaldy,  but  by  a  nearer  battery  on  the  Black- 
friars'  Yard,  and  by  guns  planted  on  the  roof  of  St  Giles 

*  Sir  Peter  Young's  letter  to  Beza,  13th  Nov.  1579. — 'Life  of 
Knox,'  by  Hume  Brown,  ii.  323. 

t  That  is,  the  Craig  Dhu  or  Black  Rock.  So  the  Calton  Crags 
were  called,  which  now  look  green  amid  surrounding  buildings, 
but  which  then  were  a  dark  and  frowning  patch  in  a  semicircle  of 
green  hill  that  stretched  from  St  Cuthberts  to  Holyrood, 


148  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

(the  biggest  of  which  the  soldiers  of  course  christened 
'  John  Knox ').  In  these  circumstances  Knox  was  safer 
away ;  and  from  May  1 5  7 1  to  August  1572  his  residence 
was  St  Andrews.  There  the  mild  James  Melville,  a 
student  at  St  Leonards,  watched  the  old  man  with  the 
wistful  reverence  of  youth. 

*  I  saw  him  every  day  of  his  doctrine  go  hulie  and  fear  *  with  a 
furring  of  martricks  about  his  neck,  a  staff  in  the  one  hand,  and 
good  godly  Richard  Ballanden,  his  servant,  holding  up  the  other 
oxter, t  from  the  Abbey  to  the  parish  kirk  ;  and  by  the  said  Richard 
and  another  servant,  lifted  up  to  the  pulpit,  where  he  behoved  to  lean 
at  his  first  entry ;  but  before  he  had  done  with  his  sermon,  he  was 
so  active  and  vigorous  that  he  was  like  to  ding  that  pulpit  iti  blads,X 
and  fly  out  of  it ! '  §  And  the  impact  on  the  mind  of  the  youthful 
Melville  was  scarcely  less  than  that  on  the  pulpit.      He  had  his 

*  pen  and  little  book,'  and  for  the  first  half  hour  of  Knox's  sermon,      ^ 
took  down  '  such  things  as  I  could  comprehend ' ;  but  when  the 
preacher  *  entered  to  the  application  of  his  text  he  made  me  so  to 
gj'ue  II  and  tremble  that  I  could  not  hold  a  pen  to  write  ! '  IT 

But  his  day  was  rapidly  moving  to  its  close ;  and 
Knox,  without  waiting  for  his  return  to  Edinburgh,  now 
wrote  his  Will.  In  it,  after  an  unexpectedly  mild  address 
to  the  Papists,  and  a  prophecy  (which  was  not  fulfilled) 
that  his  death  would  turn  out  a  worse  thing  for  them 
than  his  life,  he  turns  to  the  other  side,  and  in  one  strik- 
ing paragraph  sums  up  the  work  that  was  now  to  close. 

'  To  the  faithful  I  protest,  that  God,  by  my  mouth,  be  I  never  so 
abject,  has  shewn  to  you  His  truth  in  all  simplicity.  None  I  have 
corrupted ;  none  I  have  defrauded  ;  merchandise  have  I  not  made 
(to  God's  glory  I  write)  of  the  glorious  Evangel  of  Jesus  Christ. 
But  according  to  the  measure  of  the  grace  granted  unto  me,  I  have 
divided  the  sermon  [word]  of  truth  into  just  parts  :  beating  down 

*  Slowly  and  warily.        f  Armpit.        %  Smite  it  into  shivers. 
§  'Autobiography  and  Diary,'  p.  33. 

II  To  grue  =  to  thrill  and  shudder. 
IT  '  Autobiography  and  Diary,'  p.  26. 


JOHN  KNOX  149 

the  pride  of  the  proud  in  all  that  did  declare  their  rebellion  against 
God,  according  as  God  in  His  law  gives  to  me  yet  testimony  ;  and 
raising  up  the  consciences  troubled  with  the  knowledge  of  their 
own  sins,  by  the  declaring  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  strength  of  His 
death,  and  the  mighty  operation  of  His  resurrection  in  the  hearts  of 
the  faithful.' 

When  (still  before  leaving  St  Andrews)  he  publishes 
his  last  book,  he  dedicates  it  to  the  faithful  '  that  God 
of  His  mercy  shall  appoint  to  fight  after  me ; '  and  he 
adds,  '  I  heartily  salute  and  take  my  good-night  of  all 
the  faithful  of  both  realms  ...  for  as  the  world  is 
weary  of  me,  so  am  I  of  it.'  In  those  darkening  days, 
even  when  he  is  merely  to  write  his  subscription,  it  is 
'  John  Knox,  with  my  dead  hand  but  glad  heart.'  For 
in  this  inevitable  anti-climax  of  failing  life,  Knox  found 
his  compensations  not  in  the  world,  nor  even  in  the 
Church.  When  he  returned  to  Edinburgh,  he  had  be- 
come unable  for  pastoral  work.  '  All  worldly  strength, 
yea,  even  in  things  spiritual,'  he  writes  to  his  expected 
colleague,  '  decays,  and  yet  never  shall  the  work  of  God 
decay.  .  .  .  Visit  me,  that  we  may  confer  together  on 
heavenly  things :  for,  in  earth,  there  is  no  stability, 
except  in  the  Kirk  of  Jesus  Christ,  ever  fighting  under 
the  cross.  Haste,  ere  you  come  too  late.'  His  colleague 
hurried  from  Aberdeen  to  Edinburgh,  and  at  his  induc- 
tion Knox  appeared  and  spoke  once  more  in  public. 
But  it  was  the  last  time,  and  at  the  close  of  the  service 
the  whole  congregation  accompanied  the  failing  steps  of 
their  minister  down  to  the  Netherbow.  And  from  that 
9th  November  1572  he  never  left  his  house. 

We  have  at  least  two  accounts  of  his  death — one  in 
Latin  from  a  colleague,  one  in  Scots  by  his  old  servitor 
and  secretary  ;  and  the  latter  seems  to  have  the  merit  of 
admiring  and  indiscriminating  faithfulness.  It  is  often 
said  that  such  death-bed  narratives  are  worthless,  unless 


ISO  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

judged  by  the  light  thrown  upon  them  from  the  previous 
life.  It  is  true.  Yet  Death,  too,  is  a  great  critic; 
and,  at  least  when  that  previous  life  has  included  a 
problem,  (as  we  have  thought  to  be  the  case  here),  it 
may  be  well  before  we  volunteer  a  verdict  to  listen  to 
his  summing  up.  It  may  finally  divide,  or  it  may  re- 
unite, the  inward  and  outward  elements  which  have 
co-existed  in  the  life.  And  it  may  at  least  reveal  which 
of  them  was  the  ruling  and  radical  characteristic.  For 
while  Knox  had  long  been  a  beacon-light  to  Scotland, 
we  have  had  reason  to  think  that  the  flame  was  first 
kindled  in  this  man's  own  soul.  But  now  that  the 
fuel  which  fed  it  is  withdrawn,  will  that  flame  sink 
into  the  socket  ?  Will  it  flicker  out,  now  that  the 
airs  which  fanned  it  have  become  still  ?  How  will  it 
behave  in  the  chill  that  falls  from  those  winnowing 
wings  ? 

The  day  after  Knox  sickened  he  gave  one  of  his 
servants  twenty  shillings  above  his  fee,  with  the  words, 
'  Thou  wilt  never  get  no  more  from  me  in  this  life.'  Two 
days  after,  his  mind  wandered  ;  and  he  wished  to  go  to 
church  '  to  preach  on  the  resurrection  of  Christ.'  Next 
day  he  was  better ;  and  when  two  friends  called  he 
ordered  a  hogshead  of  wine  to  be  pierced,  and  urged 
them  to  partake,  for  their  host  '  would  not  tarry  until  it 
was  all  drunk.'  On  Monday,  the  17th,  he  asked  the 
elders  and  deacons  of  his  church,  with  the  ministers  of 
Edinburgh  and  Leith,  to  meet  with  him  ;  and  in  solemn 
and  affectionate  words,  nearly  the  same  with  those  above 
quoted  from  his  will,  reviewed  his  ministry  and  took 
leave  of  them  all.  But  here  too  trouble  from  his  past 
awaited  him.  He  had  not  long  before  accused  from 
the  pulpit  Maitland  of  Lethington,  now  in  the  Castle, 
of  having  said  that  '  Heaven  and  hell  are  things 
devised  to  fray  bairns ; "  and  Maitland's  demand  for 
evidence  or  apology  was  brought  to  him.     Knox  had 


JOHN  KNOX  151 

never  been  able  to  bear  contradiction,  especially  when 
he  was  somewhat  in  the  wrong ;  and  those  who  wish  to 
acquire  new  virtues  must  not  postpone  them  to  their 
last  hours.  His  defence  was  roundabout  and  ineffectual ; 
and  all  were  glad  when  he  parted  from  these  details  of 
his  long  life-struggle,  so  that  his  friends,  with  tears, 
might  take  their  last  look  of  his  worn  and  wearied  face. 
The  effort  had  been  too  much  for  him,  and  henceforth 
he  never  spoke  but  with  great  pain.  Yet  during  the 
rest  of  the  week  he  had  many  visitors.  One  after 
another  the  nobles  in  Edinburgh,  Lords  Boyd,  Drum- 
lanrig,  Lindsay,  Ruthven,  Glencairn,  and  Morton  (then 
about  to  be  elected  Regent)  had  interviews  with  him. 
Of  Morton  he  demanded  whether  he  had  been  privy  to 
the  murder  of  Darnley,  and  receiving  an  evasive 
assurance  that  he  had  not,  he  charged  him  to  use  his 
wealth  and  high  place  '  better  in  time  to  come  than  you 
have  done  in  time  past.  If  so  ye  do,  God  shall  bless 
and  honour  you  ;  but  if  ye  do  it  not,  God  shall  spoil 
you  of  these  benefits,  and  your  end  shall  be  ignominy 
and  shame.'  When  so  many  men  pressed  in,  women, 
devout  and  honourable,  were  of  course  also  present. 
One  lady  commenced  to  praise  his  works  for  God's 
cause  :  '  Tongue  !  tongue  !  lady,'  he  broke  in  ;  *  flesh  of 
itself  is  overproud,  and  needs  no  means  to  esteem  itself.' 
Gradually  they  all  left,  except  his  true  friend  Fairley  of 
Braid.  Knox  turned  to  him  :  '  Every  one  bids  me 
good-night ;  but  when  will  you  do  it  ?  I  shall  never  be 
able  to  recompense  you  ;  but  I  commit  you  to  One  that 
is  able  to  do  it — to  the  Eternal  God.'  During  the  days 
that  followed,  his  weakness  reduced  him  to  ejaculatory 
sentences  of  prayer.  '  Come,  Lord  Jesus.  Sweet  Jesus, 
into  Thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit.'  But  Scotland 
was  still  on  his  heart ;  and  as  Napoleon  in  his  last  hours 
was  heard  to  mutter  tete  d'armeCy  so  Knox's  attendants 


152  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

caught  the  words,  '  Be  merciful,  O  Lord,  to  Thy  Church, 
which  Thou  hast  redeemed.  Give  peace  to  this  afflicted 
commonwealth.  Raise  up  faithful  pastors  who  will  take 
charge  of  Thy  Church.  -  Grant  us.  Lord,  the  perfect 
hatred  of  sin,  both  by  the  evidences  of  Thy  wrath  and 
mercy.'  Sometimes  he  was  conscious  of  those  around, 
and  seemed  to  address  them.  '  O  serve  the  Lord  in 
fear,  and  death  shall  not  be  terrible  to  you.  Nay, 
blessed  shall  death  be  to  those  who  have  felt  the  power 
of  the  death  of  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God.' 

On  his  last  Sabbath  a  more  remarkable  scene  oc- 
curred. He  had  been  lying  quiet  during  the  afternoon, 
and  suddenly  exclaimed,  '  If  any  be  present  let  them 
come  and  see  the  work  of  God.'  His  friend,  Johnston  of 
Elphinstone,  was  summoned  from  the  adjacent  church, 
and  on  his  arrival  Knox  burst  out,  'I  have  been  these  two 
last  nights  in  meditation  on  the  troubled  Church  of  God, 
the  spouse  of  Jesus  Christ,  despised  of  the  world,  but 
precious  in  His  sight.  I  have  called  to  God  for  her, 
and  have  committed  her  to  her  head,  Jesus  Christ.  I 
have  been  fighting  against  Satan,  who  is  ever  ready  to 
assault.  Yea,  I  have  fought  against  spiritual  wickedness 
in  heavenly  things,  and  have  prevailed.  I  have  been  in 
heaven  and  have  possession.  I  have  tasted  of  the 
heavenly  joys  where  presently  I  am."  Gradually  this 
rapture  of  retrospection  and  assurance  wore  itself  down, 
with  the  help  of  recitation  by  the  dying  man  of  the  Creed 
and  the  Lord's  Prayer — Knox  pausing  over  the  clause 
'  Our  Father,'  to  ejaculate,  '  Who  can  pronounce  so  holy 
words  ? ' 

Next  day,  Monday,  24  November,  1572,  was  his  last 
on  earth.  His  three  most  intimate  friends  sat  by  his 
bedside.  Campbell  of  Kinyeancleugh  asked  him  if  he 
had  any  pain.  'It  is  no  painful  pain,'  he  said;  'but 
such  a  pain  as  shall  soon,  I  trust,  put  an  end  to  the 
battle.'     To  this  friend  he  left  in  charge  his  wife,  whom 


JOHN  KNOX  153 

later  of  the  day  he  asked  to  read  him  the  fifteenth 
chapter  to  the  Corinthians.  When  it  was  finished, 
*  Now  for  the  last  [time],'  he  said,  '  I  commend  my 
soul,  spirit,  and  body'  (and  as  he  spoke  he  touched 
three  of  his  fingers)  'into  Thy  hands,  O  Lord.'  Later 
of  the  day  he  called  to  his  wife  again,  '  Go  read  where  I 
cast  my  first  anchor ! '  She  turned  to  the  seventeenth 
chapter  of  John,  and  followed  it  up  with  part  of  a 
sermon  of  Calvin  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians.  It 
seems  to  have  been  after  this  that  he  fell  into  a  moaning 
slumber.  All  watched  around  him.  Suddenly  he  woke, 
and  being  asked  why  he  sighed,  said  that  he  had  been 
sustaining  a  last  'assault  of  Satan.'  Often  before  had 
he  tempted  him  with  allurements,  and  urged  him  to 
despair.  Now  he  had  sought  to  make  him  feel  as  if 
he  had  merited  heaven  by  his  faithful  ministry.  'But 
what  have  I  that  I  have  not  received?  Wherefore,* 
I  give  thanks  to  my  God,  through  Jesus  Christ,  who 
hath  been  pleased  to  give  me  the  victory ;  and  I  am 
persuaded  that  the  tempter  shall  not  again  attack 
me,  but  that  within  a  short  time  I  shall,  without 
any  great  pain  of  body  or  anguish  of  mind,  exchange 
this  mortal  and  miserable  life  for  a  blessed  immor- 
tality through  Jesus  Christ.'  During  the  hours  which 
followed  he  lay  quite  still,  and  they  delayed  reading 
the  evening  prayer  till  past  ten  o'clock,  thinking  he 
was  asleep.  When  it  was  finished,  his  physician  asked 
him  if  he  had  heard  the  prayers.  'Would  to  God,' 
he  answered,  '  that  you  and  all  men  had  heard  them  as 
I  have  heard  them ;  I  praise  God  for  that  heavenly 
sound."  As  eleven  o'clock  drew  on  he  gave  a  deep 
sigh,  and  they  heard  the  words,  '  Now  it  is  come.'  His 
servant,  Richard  Bannatyne,  drew  near,  and  called  upon 
him  to  think  upon  the  comfortable  promises  of  Christ 

*  It  will  be  recognised  that  this  sentence  is  translated  from  the 
Latin. 


154  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

which  he  had  so  often  declared  to  others.  Knox  was 
already  speechless,  but  his  servant  pleaded  for  one  sign 
that  he  heard  the  words  of  peace.  As  if  collecting  his 
whole  strength,  he  lifted  up  his  right  hand  heavenwards, 
and  sighing  twice,  peacefully  expired. 

Such  a  life  had  such  a  close. 


INDEX 


Acts  of  Parliament,  24,  80,  99, 

100,  114. 
Affliction,  Treatise  on,  59. 
Alnwick,  Cupboard  at,  55. 
Alva,  137. 

Anabaptists,  72,  102. 
Anchor,  Knox's  first,  30,  37,  39, 

47,  153- 
Apostolic  Order  of  Worship,  72. 
Appellation,  ']']. 
Appropriations,  21,  22. 
Archbishop  of  St  Andrews,  140, 

141. 
Argyll,  Earl  of,  130. 
Aristocracy,  Scottish,  20-22,  73, 

n.  115- 

Armenians,  68. 

Arran,  Earl  of,  119. 

Assembly,    General,    107,    115, 

140. 
Assurance,  28,  29,  30. 
Auditors  bound  to  support,  112, 

113.. 
Autobiography,  9,  12,  13,  28,  31, 

53- 

Balnaves,  36. 
Band,  73,  74,  90,  139- 
Bannatyne,  Richard,  153. 
Bartholomew,  St,  146. 
Beaton,    David    (Cardinal),    18, 

24,  26,  38. 
Beaton,  James  (Archbishop),  17. 
Beggars'  Warning,  82,  108. 
Benefices,  107,  112. 
Berwick,  49,  66. 
Beza,  10. 

Bible,  24,  30,  33,  72,  125. 
Bishopric  offered  Knox,  49. 


Bishops,  The  R.C.,  93. 
'  Bishops  and  Kings,'  71. 
Blast    (against    Women's   Regi- 
men), 120. 
Books  in  Knox's  Library,  145. 
Borgia,  12. 

Bothwell,  139,  140,  141. 
Bothwellhaugh, 
Bowes,  Mrs,  53-61. 
Bowes,    Marjory.    (Mrs   Knox,) 

49-51- 
Bowes,  Sir  R.,  50. 
Brown,  Dr  Hume,  10,  21,  39, 

68,  no,  144. 
Browning,  57. 
Buchanan,  George,  19,  24. 
Bullinger,  68. 
Bunyan  in  Bedford,  55. 
Burghs,  75. 
Burton,  J.  Hill,  45. 

Calvin,  30,  43,  51,  (>*],  68. 
Campbell  of  Kinzeancleuch,  152. 
Cannon-ball,  63. 
Carlyle,  37,  38,  39,  46,  94. 
Catechism  Palatinate,  30. 
Catholic  system,  14-24,  23. 
Call,  Knox's,  28,  31,  32,  Chap. 

11.  (25-47). 
Cecil,  87,  92,  143. 
Ceremonies,  36. 
Charities,  104. 
Chatelherault,  Duke  of,  51. 
Comfort,  Knox's  lack  of,  53. 
Commonalty,  Letter  to,  77,  78. 
'  Common   Man,  The,'  43,    48, 

78,94. 
Compensations,  149. 
*  Conditions,'  Knox's,  63. 


156 


INDEX. 


Confession  of  1560,  92-97,  117, 
123. 

Confession  of  Wishart  (First 
Helvetic),  30,  36,  38,  97,  102, 
103,  109. 

Confession,  Knox's  personal,  28, 
140. 

Confessions,  Change  in,  97. 

Confessions  of  Protestantism,  95, 

lOI. 

'  Congregation,  The,'  74. 
Conscience,   86,    90,    124,    126, 

135. 
Constantine,  14. 
Constitutionalism,  19,  137. 
Consuetude,  55. 
Conversion,  Knox's,  9,  27,  Chap. 

11.  (25-47). 
Convocation  of  Lieges,  135. 
Coronation  Oath,  100. 
Coronation  Sermon,  142. 
Corpuscle,  147. 
Council,  General  Church,  15-17, 

18. 
Council,  Provincial  Church,  84. 

*  Country,  What  I  have  been  to 

my,'  143. 
Creed  {see  Confession). 
Crisis  in  life,  Chap.  II. 
Crock,  Le,  146. 

Darnley,  41,  136,  138-141. 
Death  of  Knox,  149-154. 

•  Deliberate  Mind,'  27-31,  140. 
Desertion,  59. 

Dialogues    vi^ith    Queen    Mary, 

123-134. 
Discipline,   Book  of,    106,    108, 

109-115. 
Dispensation      for      Bothwell  s 

Marriage,  141. 
Donations,  104. 
Dow  Craig,  147. 
Dundee,  75. 
Dyspepsia,  63. 

Edinburgh,  61,  69,  86,  88, 
Chapter  VII.  (144-154). 


Edinburgh,  Treaty  of,  91. 
Ejectment,  Summons  of,  83,  84. 
Eleazar  Knox,  51. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  82,  92,   119, 

120,  131,  138. 
Endowments,    20-22,    8^,    104, 

105,  III,  114. 
England,  20,  21,  22,  24,  38,  41, 

66,  67,  86,  141. 
Establishment,  14,  23,  100. 
Evangel,  28-31,  34,  39,  43>  44, 

46,  69,  94,  148. 
Excommunication,  100. 


Face,  Knox's,  146. 
Fairley  of  Braid,  151. 

Familiarity,'  never  broken,  63. 
'  Fearfulness  '  of  Knox,  33. 
Fergus  the  First,  19. 
France,  82,  117,  118,  143. 
Francis  II.,  118. 
Frankfort,  67. 
Friars,  The,  80,  83. 

Galleys,  32,  65,  66. 
Gallicanism,  15,  16,  17. 
Geneva,  68. 
Genius,  Knox's,  45. 
Gentlewoman's  face,  127. 
Gerson,  Chancellor,  16. 
Golden  Rose,  128. 
Granvelle,  Cardinal,  128,  137. 
Gravel,  63. 

Haddington,   10,  12,   14,  19, 

25. 
Hamilton,  Patrick,  18,  24,  29. 
Hebrew,  145. 
Helvetic  (First)  Confession,  30, 

36,  38,  97,  102,  103,  109. 
'  History   of   Reformation,'   45, 

140. 
Hospitals,  83. 
House,  Knox's,  144,  145. 
Humanism,  16,  20,  23. 
Huntly,  Earl  of,  139,  145. 


INDEX. 


157 


Idolatry,  40,  67,  77,  102,  103, 

122. 
Independence  of  Church,  94,  96, 

98,  115. 
*  Indifferency,'  70,  71,  81,  86. 
Individualism,  43,  56. 
Induration,  126, 
Infidelity,  56,  60,  95,  133. 
Inner  Life,  Knox's,  Chapters  II. 

and  III. 
Intolerance,  14,  23,  24,  26,  32, 

99-103. 
Irrevocableness  of  Call,  33. 

James  V. ,  24. 
Jesuit  (Tyrie),  96. 
Johnston  of  Elphinstone,  152. 
Jurisdiction,  99,  100,  114. 

Kirk  of  Field, 

Kirkcaldy  of  Grange,  42,  142. 

Laing,  David,  26. 
Lawson,  James,  10,  11. 
Leadership,  Weight  of,  34. 
Legislation,    14,    24,    Chap.    V. 

(95-116). 
Leith,  88,  147. 
Lethington,   42,    89,    131,    135, 

142,  ISO- 
Letters  of  Knox  (private).  Chap. 

IIL 
Lindsay,  Sir  David,  31. 
Lindsay,  Lord,  93. 
Locke,  Mrs,  61-63. 
Loire,  39,  65. 
Longniddry,  26,  31. 
Luther,  17,  18,  20,  36,  43. 

M'Crie,  Dr  Thomas,  144. 
M'Cunn,  Mrs,  39. 
Macphail,  Dr  Jas.  C,  1 1 3. 
♦Magistrate,   The,'   35,    36,   67, 

68,  73j77,  97»  103.  ii7,  120, 

124. 
Mair  {see  Major). 
Maitland  {see  Lethington). 
Major,  John,  10,  15-19J  22. 


Maries,  The  Four,  52,  63. 

Marischal,  The  Earl,  93. 

Marmion,  49. 

'  Marriage,  My,'  133. 

Marvels,  40-44. 

Mary  of  Lorraine,  Queen  Regent, 

69-71,  76,  79,  80,  81,  82,  84, 

90,  91,  126. 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  42,   52, 

80,  82,  Chap.  VL  (117-143)- 
Mary,  Queen  of  England,  82. 
Mass,  The,  67,  69,  99,  122,  127, 

129. 
'Meditation  or  Prayer,   27-31. 
Melancholy,  Knox's,  63. 
Melville,  James,  148. 
Mitchell,  Dr  A.  F.,  109. 
Moray,   Earl  of,    51,   122,    1 31, 

132,  137,  142. 
Morton,  Earl  of,  33,  139,  151. 
Movements,  Leadership  of,  34. 

Nathaniel  Knox,  51. 
National  Churches,  15-18. 
'Need  of  all,' of  Knox,  63. 
Netherbow,  145,  147,  149. 
Norham  Castle,  48,  49. 
Notary,  11. 

Ochiltree,  Lord,  52. 
Organisation  of  Church,  35,  lio, 
115,  116. 

Palatinate  Catechism,  30. 

Parentage  of  Knox,  10. 

Paris,  University  of,  15-18. 

Parishes,  20-22. 

Parliament,  92,  94,  98,  138. 

Pasquil,  70. 

Patrimony  of  the  Church,   106, 

114,  115. 
Patrimony  of  the  Poor,  83,  107. 
Persecution,   14,  23,  24,  26,  32, 

35,  43,  57,  74,  76,  99-io3- 
Perth,  85. 
Poor,    The,    83,    106-108,    ill, 

115- 


158 


INDEX. 


Pope,  The,  ii,  12,   15,  18,  22, 

23,  99,  128. 
Portraits,  lo,  11. 
Prayer-book,  English,  67. 
Prayer,  Treatise  on,  66. 
Preaching,  20,  41,  75,    86,   89, 

94,  no,  132,  138,   142,   144, 

14s,  146,  148. 
Predictions,  40-44. 
Priest,  Knox  as,  11,  12,  13. 
Principles,      Fundamental,      of 

Knox,  35,  36,  146. 
Private  Life,  Chap.  III. 
*  Prophesyings,'  no,  144. 
Prophet,  Knox  as,  39-44. 
•Proud  Mind,'  126. 
Puritanism  of  Knox,  26,  35,  36, 

67,  68,  96. 

Radicalism,  19,  103,  105,  no, 
IIS,  124,  133,  I35>  137- 

Randolph  (English  Ambassa- 
dor), 90,  92,  93,  103,  127, 
128. 

Ratification  of  Creed,  117. 

'Reconciliation,  Articles  of,'  75. 

Regimen  of  Women,  63,  120, 

Regular  Priests,  21,  22. 

Renaissance,  20,  23. 

Repentance,  58. 

Reticence  of  Knox,  i,  12,  13, 

Risks  of  the   Reformation,   34, 

35- 
Rizzio,  136,  137,  139. 
Rouen,  65. 
Rough,  John,  31,  32. 
Ruthven,  Lord,  130,  139. 

Sacerdotalism,  14. 
Sandilands,  Sir  James,  117. 
Scholasticism,  14,  16,  18. 
Schools  in  Scotland,  no,  in. 
Scriptures,  The,  24,  30,  35,  72, 

125. 
Secrets  of  God's  Counsel,  42. 
Self-torture,  58. 
Shakespeare,  Priests  in,  li. 
Simony,  22. 


Sir  John  Knox,  1 1  {Note). 
Spain,  129,  131,  132,  134,  136, 

137. 
St  Andrews,  10,  26,  31,  65,  85, 

142,  148. 
St  Giles,  144. 
Statesman,  Knox  as,  45,  46,  no, 

III,  114,  115. 
Statutes,  24,  80,  99,  100,  114. 
Stewart,  Lord  James  (j^-^  Moray). 
Stewart,  Margaret  (Mrs  Knox), 

52. 
Stirhng,  89,  142. 
Sustentation,  112,  113. 
Sword,  The  Civil,  124,  129. 
Syllogism,  6"],  103. 
Sympathy  of  Knox,  13,  26,  53- 

64. 

Testamentary  Charities,  104. 

Thomassin,  107. 

Teinds,  21,  22,  105-108,  112-115. 

Tithes  {see  Teinds). 

Toleration,  14,  18,  23,  24,  35, 
74,  76,  79,  80,  81,  86,  90,  91, 
98-103,  112,  113,  114,  121, 
126,  129. 

Trent,  Council  of,  13 1. 

Turing,  or  Trunk  Close,  145. 

'Use  themselves  Godly,'  75, 
81,  129. 

Vocation,  Knox's,  28,  31,  32, 
Chap.  IL 

Wallace,  Sir  William,  19. 
'  Wholesome  Counsel,'  Letter  of, 

71,  72. 
Will,  Knox's,  42,  51,  148. 
Willock,  91. 
Window,  29,  47. 
Wishart,  George,  25,  26,  30,  36, 

38,  97,  102,  109. 
Women  Friends,  Chap.  IIL 

Young,  Sir  Peter,  10,  146. 


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